Nick Saban evaluates importance of psychology to coaching

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban was so good for so long as a leading figure in football that generations to come will likely comb through his career to try to glean special insights that might help in their own coaching journey.

Saban is all too willing to share them.

One of the things that he found most helpful in developing the “Saban Way” was the use of psychology to help connect with his players in a deeper and more meaningful way.

One man, Lionel Rosen, was a huge part of that.

“I don’t know if you remember Dr. Rosen, so I’ve always had this great appreciation, which I don’t think a lot of coaches do, for psychological disposition of people and their ability to compete,” Nick Saban said recently on The Pivot podcast. “I mean I think as coaches we look at physical ability and talent, but sometimes we don’t look at the mental aspects of what it takes to be able to bring the talent to fruition.

“Talent is not talent if you can’t use it, and some people can’t use it because of how they think, what their hard-wiring is or whatever. So I always had Dr. Rosen, (who) was a psychiatrist. We also had another psychiatrist that worked with us at LSU. And he worked with us at Miami as well. And we had another guy. We had a couple at Alabama. But he’s always been with me.”

Nick Saban was a masterful motivator, able to get his team performing at the highest level more often than not. And he could work with a narrative.

Beat Alabama during the regular season and you could rest assured the Crimson Tide would come gunning with everything they’ve got in the postseason. That’s just how it went.

That’s all thanks to Saban’s ability to unlock mentality, with a little help from Dr. Rosen, of course.

“Because he was a psychiatrist, he could always give me some feedback on people that I would never be able to recognize as a coach,” Saban said. “Like how do you manage this guy? Because some guys you need to get on, they’re not self-starters. Some guys are like obsessive compulsive, want to do everything right. Well you don’t want to get on that guy.

“But you don’t want everybody around to know that you’re treating people different, that you’re yelling at this guy but you never yell at that guy. Does that make sense? So he’s the guy that always gave me some information and insight into what’s the best way to coach this player. And that was very helpful to me.”

It sounds simple when Nick Saban outlines it like that, but it’s far from an easy process to master. The mind is a tricky place and mastery of motivation is a learned skill.

Over time, though, the work to truly study players and get to know what makes them tick can pay off.

“Everybody kind of learns that you really do have their best interests in mind and you’re trying to help them develop,” Saban said. “And some of it is how do you manage adversity? Because you’re always going to have it in sports. There’s no game that you play, there’s nothing where things always go right. They’re going to go wrong and you’ve got to play the next play and you’ve got to be able to respond to it.”

Nick Saban made it abundantly clear: Psychology can be a huge weapon in unlocking all that potential.