“Big People, Beat Up Little People” First Words from Homo sapiens Species.

Nick Saban has Alabama in the National Championship again as they get ready to face Georgia on 01/10/2022. Saban is going after Title #7 with the Crimson Tide.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Alabama’s 6 National Titles in the last 15 years all started back on a hot, humid evening 2007 high school track meet.

Former Alabama recruiting coordinator Curt Cignetti saw his boss, Nick Saban, the 'King of the Recruiting Trail', at work.“

It was back at a time when head coaches could be out on the road,'' Cignetti told Bleacher Report recently. "We had already put a full day in. But we go to this track meet and watch this player run track at 7:30 on a Friday night. I said to myself, ‘Wow, how many coaches are doing this at 7:30 on a Friday night in spring?''

The progress he and the rest of Saban’s coaching staff made on the recruiting trail in 2007 would form the foundation of a college football dynasty.

Saban’s first full recruiting cycle in 2008 resulted in a class that included Mark Ingram, Julio Jones, Mark Barron, Barrett Jones, Marcell Dareus and a host of others who would form the core of the Tide’s national championship teams in 2009, 2011 and 2012. WOW, coming out swinging!!!

He’s since reinforced his roster with sixteen more Top 5 classes—including MULTIPLE '‘Recruiting National Championships,’' according to 247 Sports.

Comparatively, Alabama’s average recruiting class rank during the Mike Shula era (2003-06) was 25th. Under Saban, it’s First.

The Tide’s success begins with Saban and his staff’s ability to identify prospects who will make the most of their talent. It is all part of his famously secretive "process" that begins with the development of a player-type model—which establishes the ideal physical traits for positions, all the way down to desirable height/weight ranges.

100% physical elements are an integral part in Saban’s player evaluation process.

Note: Coaches and scouts often cross a player’s name off the list if he does not meet or exceed the physical skill benchmarks at his position. These evaluators have a firm grasp of what numbers each athlete should achieve to be successful at the next level.

“He (Saban) would take an athlete with size before a natural 5’8” corner,” said Kevin Jackson, a former Tide All-American safety and defensive coordinator at Dothan (Ala.) High School. “If a kid fits their profile, Saban is confident he can teach that bigger athlete to do the things they want him to do in their defense.’'

LaBrian Stewart, the head coach at Northview High School—said Saban has the evaluation process down pat.

"If everyone knew how he was doing it, they would try the same thing. That’s why you won’t ever see his evaluation sheet."

The Physical

“'Coach Saban basically has an NFL team playing college football.'' — Coach LaBrian Stewart

Saban constructs his Alabama teams as if they were the NFL’s 33rd franchise. Nowhere is that more evident than in the sheer size and physicality of the players he’s recruited since arriving at The Capstone.

“Saban recruits the type of guys that have NFL-type bodies, or frames that NFL clubs typically want.'' Stewart said.

Alabama is ahead of the curve in that regard, which is illustrated in the table below that compares the average height and weight of Saban’s Alabama signees to the top 50 players at each position from the class of 2014.

At positions such as running back, offensive tackle, defensive end and outside and inside linebacker,

Alabama recruits are least 10 pounds heavier than the average of the top 50 recruits.

“They are looking for guys who pass the eye test,” said John Harris, who mentored 2014’s top defensive end prospect and Alabama target Da’Shawn Hand as an assistant coach at Woodbridge High School in Stone Bridge, Va. 

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Speed, size and playmaking ability are at the top of Saban’s wish list.

Playing in the Savage SEC makes these physical characteristics coveted as a package instead of individually.

However, one characteristic undoubtedly takes precedent on the Tide’s recruiting board.

‘With everything else being equal, size would overrule. The heavyweight knocks out the lightweight in the SEC every time.

Saban also searches for the ability to quickly change direction and move in explosive bursts at every position.

“I’ve heard him (Saban) say it a thousand times…ankle, knee and hip flexibility is extremely important because football is a stop-and-start game,” Cignetti said.

THIS ALL STARTED BACK IN 1991.

In Berea, Ohio, in the early spring of 1991, the Cleveland Browns had just started to piece together their system for evaluating college football players in the draft. The Browns wanted a clear system to evaluate players. Systems are crazy powerful because too many times a scout or coach will let bias creep into their decision making as they go after their guy.

With set definitions of what the team wanted in players, position by position, and then a numerical value assigned to a player who fit those definitions the process would them yield better players. They system would stay in place as the team changed front office personnel. The grade was the grade and that was it. This is Crazy Innovative even now because we do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. This is true for anything that we do.

The system the Browns created declared that a player of a certain height, weight and speed was capable of a certain level of accomplishment in the NFL. If a player met the requirements for his position, he remained on their list of draftable players. If the player did not clear the system’s standard then the player was downgraded. The player would be downgraded with a letter or tag—B for “bulk,” Z for “height,” for example – and then that players had to be exceptional in some area to get back on the board.

The NFL scouts would also fill in numerical values for each player’s critical factors,” position by position, such as athletic ability, strength, explosiveness, speed and most importantly was the player “Twitchy.”

Number grades were then handed out and the players were placed on the draft board accordingly.

The organization held fast to their scouting cred because Belichick that was how it was done. Plus Belichick was pretty “Twitchy” himself. In the film room he would drop his hips and change direction with the quickness when he noticed a player dozing off.

Ernie Accorsi was the general manager for the Browns back in 1991, but Belichick was making the final call. The Browns would fly in Gil Brandt, the former Dallas Cowboys general manager, who had started the system back in 1961. Brandt sat for five seasons with Belichick and Michael Lombardi, who was the pro personnel director.

 The squad had meeting after meeting continuously optimizing the system to meet their needs. These meetings eventually included a young defensive coordinator that they had just brought in from Toledo.

Nick Saban. Saban helped with the refinement of the system in his three years with the Browns.

When Saban left Cleveland in 1994 to become the Head Coach at Michigan State, he took it with him. The SpeedAndSize system then moved with him to LSU, the Miami Dolphins and now it is engrained inside the heads of coaches and player personnel staff in Tuscaloosa. The foundation of Alabama’s recruiting is this player evaluation system developed by the Browns, but with roots that go back 50 years.

The Crimson Tide grade the high school players that they are recruiting on a scale of 1 through 5—the Browns system was 5 through 8—and this system not only has helped Alabama Win National titles, it has also helped the Cowboys, Patriots and Ravens win Super Bowls.

Speed and Size Matter. Big People Beat Up Little People.

What the system does for Alabama is that it eliminates mistakes in recruiting. An Alabama coach cannot look at a high school player and state that he wants him at corner if the player does not match the height, weight, speed, athletic ability and explosiveness. This makes life much much much easier!

The Mental

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The physical element is 100% #1 in Saban’s hierarchy of player evaluation factors, but evidence of a metric not found on a profile page of 247Sports or any other recruiting site—mental toughness—is almost equally important.

Winning character, resilience and the ability to respond to instruction from an extraordinarily demanding coaching staff and the football smarts necessary to understand the Tide’s complex schemes weigh heavily on Saban’s mind during the recruiting process.

Mental toughness does not entail clenching your teeth, trying harder, thinking more, straining your eyes to focus, or having someone scream ‘Be tough!’ at you. Mental toughness is the ability to remain positive and proactive in the most adverse of circumstances. Mental toughness is built on doing the thing that is hard over and over again, especially when you don’t feel like it. Push through on your down days when you are not feeling your best. Distraction, discomfort, and difficulties are no match for the champion.

Talent always jumps out, but it must be combined with the gritty determination to win championships.

How do you improve your Grit Skill?

Interest + Practice + Purpose + Hope.

The Alabama program is World-Class in the development of mental toughness.

It’s a Skill that separates Saban and his program from the pack in college football, and a big part of the reason why the Tide have had 15 first-round draft picks in the last four years.

Determining a player’s mindset and willingness to learn and improve on a daily basis gives Saban and his staff the best chance to help him reach his full potential on the college level.

In his evaluation of mental toughness, Saban excels in identifying something that most NFL coaches struggle to find in 21- and 22-year-old men during the draft process—except he is doing it with with 17- and 18-year-old kids.

“What’s crazy is that when I was first getting recruited, we never really talked about football,’’ former Tide linebacker Nico Johnson said. “He was so big on school, and telling me about my degree and making sure I was on top of that stuff. He feels like if you can be mentally strong, then you are able to do anything within his system.”

One of Saban’s key metrics for measuring mental toughness is how a player reacts after a bad play. Does he sulk enough to let it affect him on the next play or beyond? Or can he regain his focus, collect turnarounds and move on to the next play? At the Playmaker Project we talk about this Skill ALL THE TIME. Checkout our article here on how to do that. This is a Skill you can Develop!

We need to know that we will have “glitches.” The trick is in getting REALLY good at recovering from them.

You make a mistake, you have a glitch. Fine. It happens. Now, how fast can you recover? How quickly can you get back on the path to Greatness.

Glitch. Recovery.

Glitch. Recovery.

Glitch. Recovery.

Check out our Article Here Learn more About the Power of Glitch. Recovery.

Saban understands the importance of collecting those turnarounds. To perform at a champion’s level, you must understand the importance of a long-term memory for success and a short-term memory (or selective amnesia) for failure. Of course you need a system for this just like Saban has a system.  

Are you an athlete interested in developing yourself into a World-Class Athlete and Leader. 

In Playmaker School and at Playmaker University we provide a simple system that any athlete young and/or old can do to maximize their sport skill development, training, sleep, recovery, focus and mindset.

Are you a parent/teacher/coach who has a child and/or team that is interested in developing World-Class Athletes and Leaders. Sign up for Playmaker School today.

Are you an athlete interested in developing yourself into a World-Class Athlete and Leader.

Sign up for Playmaker University today.