Legendary college football coach and former Michigan State coach Nick Saban was back at Alabama on Friday, where he spoke to Crimson Tide graduates and welcomed President Donald Trump at a spring commencement ceremony.
Saban, who won seven national titles as a collegiate head coach — six at Alabama and one at LSU — knows a thing or two about how to be successful, not just on the gridiron, but in life.
While speaking to the graduates on Friday, Saban revealed three lessons that have allowed him to thrive in life.
“When you embark on this journey, there’s three things that I think always help me,” he said. “First of all, have compassion for other people. Treat people like you would like to be treated. Treat people nicely on your way up; you might meet them on the way down. So, it’s nice to be important, but it’s also more important to be nice. So, that was the first thing: compassion for other people.
“The second thing is: Be responsible for your own self-determination. You got to earn it. Don’t look at somebody else, don’t blame somebody else; you be responsible for your own self-determination and have accountability for what your job is and what you need to do.
“And the last thing is: It’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about being better than somebody else. It’s about you being the best that you can be.
“We won 26 games when I played Pop Warner football in a row. Then we won 30-some in high school in a row, and it was never good enough. And I could never understand that. But my dad said, ‘It’s not about beating the other guy, it’s about you being the best that you can be at whatever you choose to do.'”
Saban served as Michigan State’s coach for five seasons before moving on to LSU, where his legacy truly began to form. He led the Spartans to three bowl games and never had a losing season while at the helm.
The world knows Saban as the greatest college football coach of all time, but what it often overlooks is that it was his coaching career as a Spartan that gained him traction on his path.
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