The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban by John Talty

Author:John Talty
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637740842
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2022-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Preparation Is Everything

Still more than four hours before the game was scheduled to start, it was Mike Vollmar’s time to shine.

As Saban’s director of football operations, Vollmar was in charge of many of the football program’s logistics—an area the attention-detailed Saban cared a lot about—but now it was time for him to present his research.

Vollmar had to offer in-depth reports on the things that Alabama couldn’t control so that it could, well, control them to the best of its ability. Vollmar’s report included detailed information on all of the referees and their tendencies over the last two years so Saban could offer specific instructions to his players. For instance, Vollmar would explain how often a back official called pass interference, information Saban would then take to his defensive backs to guide how aggressive they could be against opposing receivers.

He’d do the same for weather reports, eschewing the local weatherman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to ensure the information was as accurate as possible. If it was going to rain, Saban wanted to know the expected outcome for every hour the game was played to inform his decisions. Vollmar would go over the stadium diagram for away games—where the opposing band and student sections were situated, where their traveling fans were, and so on—so everyone knew what to do in certain situations.

“If we go to overtime, we aren’t going to start talking about it then and there,” Vollmar says. “We’re going to that end of the field based on the way things are laid out in the stadium. The detail that went into that stuff prior to even kicking the ball off was amazing.”

Saban loves being prepared, constantly searching for any and every possible advantage he can find. He knows that the person with the most accurate information, and the best way to harness that information, will likely be successful. He’s also learned the hard way what happens when you don’t consider all the possibilities in your preparation.

Vollmar’s weather and stadium layout report has its genesis from Saban’s first head coaching job at Toledo. Against Central Michigan and down by one point late in the game, Saban sent out his kicker for a game-winning field goal attempt. After the kicker hit the ball, it floated in the air before hitting a wall of wind and stopping almost in midair. It was Saban’s first loss as a head coach, a moment that stuck with him throughout his career.

“That’s something I learned in that game: that the conditions do affect the strategy of how you play,” Saban later told ESPN.

Years later as LSU’s head coach, Saban used that experience to his advantage. Studying the weather patterns that day, he knew the wind would be blowing strong and in a certain direction, informing what side of the field he wanted to start the game. That decision paid off when Marcus Randall found Devery Henderson for a 74-yard Hail Mary touchdown to beat Kentucky at the last second, known as the “Bluegrass Miracle,” benefiting from thirty-mile-per-hour winds in a favorable direction.

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