Two Questions Nick Saban Wants You To Ask Yourself

At a recent summer camp for aspiring young football players, Alabama Coach Nick Saban gave the athletes a lesson on the personal choices that would determine their success. The seven-time National Championship winning mentor, who has sent more than 100 players to the NFL, made the conversation simple.

Every day, Saban said, you have to answer two essential questions correctly. "First, is there something I’m supposed to do that I really don’t want to do. Can I make myself do it?” The second question, he continued, was really the obverse of the first. “If there is something I know I’m damn well not supposed to do but I want to do it, can I keep myself from doing it?”

"Answering these correctly will not be easy, but doing so every day will take you where you need to go," the coach said, his voice raising. Success will be found in the small decisions, such as doing homework or even taking out the garbage.

Of course, Saban is notoriously prickly with reporters who ask questions he deems irrelevant. In general, this means questions that require looking into the future rather than focusing on the game he’s preparing for at that particular moment, questions that are hypothetical in nature – the “what if” or “would you” type.

The questions he wanted the campers to pose for themselves had none of these qualities and, instead, give us a good look at why Saban has long had the ear of the nation’s CEOs and other business leaders as well as aspiring football players. At their core, Saban’s questions remind us that small decisions add up, and that life and work invariably involve struggle. The kinds of decisions we make determine not whether we will struggle on any given day, only when we will struggle and how we will do so.

Part of the challenge involves optics: viewed individually, each decision can seem insignificant.

“Should I knuckle down and get this report out I promised everybody at our last meeting, or should I ease into things by cleaning up old emails?”

“Should I meet with my marketing director to hammer out that job description for the position we’ve been dragging our feet on filling, or should I let that percolate a bit while I read that article I saved from yesterday.”

“Should I get those draft proposals in better shape for the McDougall account, or should I go through and delete all my emails that are older than six months – or maybe just the big ones with attachments?”

By the end of the day, the way we decide to answer these questions means we either spent our time sifting through email or we wrote a report, crafted a job description and made real progress on the McDougall account. Choosing properly is something we can take pride in.

For those who follow the great spectacle that is college football, you know that Saban’s top-ranked Crimson Tide lost in the 2022 National Championship game to the third-ranked Georgina Bulldogs 33 – 18, after two of Saban’s most experienced and accomplished players, wide receivers John Metchie III and Jameson Williams, were lost to injuries – Metchie in the SEC Championship game, which Alabama won by beating the Bulldogs.

Hopefully, a lot of those aspiring players who went to Saban’s camp were watching because after losing the National Championship game, Saban answered some tough questions of his own, including one about losing some of his best players when he needed them most.

“There’s no question, you win with great players,” Saban conceded in the postgame press conference. But he drew a lesson that campers and leaders everywhere can heed.

“We played some guys tonight that didn't get to play much during the season,” continued Saban. “So, they didn't have much experience going in, and they had some opportunities, and they made some plays. I'm sure that will help their confidence, and they’ll grow and learn from this, and it will be a positive experience for them and their development in the future.”

And if there’s one thing those players can be sure of, the road back to the Championship will be paved with hard work and, yes, accepting today’s struggles for achievement over tomorrow’s struggles with regret.