August 11, 2018 • 23 mins
Colin talks with Author and Podcast Host James Andrew Miller to discuss his latest podcast series with Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban. The talk about the culture he created in Tuscaloosa as well as why he hasn't gone back to the NFL in this exclusive podcast.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody, Welcome to our Saturday podcast. Really interesting guest
today who you know? Jim Miller, best selling author, will
be coming up. But before we start, I want to
talk about Peter Millar. It's a company founded seventeen years
ago in two thousand and one, with a single cashmere sweater,
and it's grown into something I love. A premium American
lifestyle brand featuring a wide range of cansual sportswear, tailored men'swear,
(00:23):
really luxury performance golf apparel. I get fit, I get style,
I get quality. To me, Peter Millar is now the
new standard in men'swear I've I've been wearing it all
spring and summer. I went to Utah this summer. I
was wearing the shorts and the golf shirts every day.
They have performance shirts. You get the value, the style,
(00:45):
and the quality. What I love about it is that
it works for everything. I get up in the morning,
go for coffee, looks classy. Afternoon, go hit golf balls,
looks great. Want to go to dinner in the summer,
but I don't want to wear heavy clothes. Looks fantastic.
The performance shorts I'm wearing are the most comfortable I've
ever worn. Right now, you can head over to petermlar
(01:07):
dot com slash her to check out some of their favorites.
Be sure to use my link and you'll get complimentary shipping.
That's key in a free hat. That's Peter Millar m
I l lar dot com slash Herd. Peter Millar dot
com slash Herd founded seventeen years ago with a single
cashmere sweater. It's a premium American lifestyle brand, all sorts,
(01:33):
wide range of casual sportswear. Well, he's my friend. He's
a best selling author. He's written several books and I've
read all of them front to back multiple times. Live
from New York. His book about Saturday Night Live as
a must read ESPN book, The Powerhouse CIA. He's also
the host of a podcast now fascinating work as always
deep diving on stuff, Origins with James Andrew Miller. You
(01:55):
can get it on iTunes and right now. His latest
session is Origins is called Origins of a Champion. About
Nick Saban. Now, what I think of you, I think
of these big broad I mean you're you're you're a
tennis player. You write these in depth books and I think,
oh God, Nick Saban. He's not going to let you
in on anything. He's going to be terribly difficult. So
(02:17):
your perceptions and the reality of dealing with Sabans, How
did you kind of reconcile all that stuff? How did
it work for you? Well? For me, I mean, going
down to Tuscaloosa to sit down with Nick Saban and
be you know, at Alabama is kind of like dealing
with some of these broader topics that I do books
on and o they're reporting on because Alabama football and
(02:40):
Nick Saban are both such huge brands, right, I mean,
it's almost like beyond the confines of college football, and
so it was very interesting for me to just to
kind of understand and to try and dig into, you know,
why this keeps happening, why this guy been so successful
(03:02):
down there, and even went into a little bit of
you know, why there wasn't that kind of success in
the NFL forum. You know, let's talk about that. You know,
I've always seen Nick is kind of a linear thinker,
compartmentalize his stuff. He talks about the process it is.
It can be redundant and repetitive and reductive, but that's
(03:22):
I think that in football that works the NFL has
got a little more star power, where the player is
a bigger star. In college, the coach is the star.
When you look at his NFL failures, and I use
that loosely because he was turning things around, but he
didn't get the doctors to give him Drew Brees, or
I think he'd still be in the NFL. In the
Bama dynasty is never created. What didn't work in the NFL,
(03:46):
in your opinion, that does work fabulously in college. Well,
I think, first of all, you're smart for contextual purposes
to point out the Drew Brees thing, because look, there
have been a lot of smart coaches, and if you
don't have in the NFL is if you don't have
a quarterback, then you're climate everston a cold, and you're shorts.
So I think if he had had Drew Brees, then
(04:07):
I think it's worth thinking that things might have been different.
But I think to the larger point in your question,
it is, Look, there's a very different dynamic. And I
talked to a lot of former players there. When you're
eighteen and nineteen years old and you haven't you know,
you're just you're you're out of your house for the
first time, and you're in this new system. These the
coaches have, particularly somebody with a reputation like Saban, there's
(04:32):
much more control over these players than NFL players have.
And as a result, I think that you can have
a level of discipline and that fear of punishment and
a lot more for lack of a better phrase, law
and order on you in your program then you can
in the NFL. And I think that that's why. Look,
(04:53):
I start the podcast off by talking about the fact
that after last year's championship, you know, there were NFL
teams that were interested in him coming over, and I think,
to his credit, that's why he decided, you know what,
I'm gonna stay here. I like this, I like this dynamic.
I like the control I have, and I don't need
to be going to the NFL now at this stage
(05:14):
of my career. Um, it's just, you know, particularly when
you talk about the process, because the process is it's
it's not only redundant, but it's redundant by design. That's
the whole thing. Like you know, you're you're like literally practicing,
not until you can't get it, until you get it right,
it's until you can't get it wrong. That's very you know,
(05:36):
it's to some degree it's factory work, you know what
I mean, it's just no mistakes. Um. You interviewed Lane Kiffen,
Joe girardi Is wife. Let's start with Kiffen. Uh Kiffen
has some star power. In fact, of all Nick's assistants,
Lane has the most star power. What's Nick's what does
What does Lane say about that time in Cataskaloosa? Oh?
(05:59):
My god, is the gift that keeps giving because it's
like he's like a he's like an iceberg because you
see just a little bit of him, but then all
this stuff is going on underneath the surface. And one
of the things that I was, you know, I think
able to do with him what they did so interesting
for me is there's like a little it's not passive aggressive,
(06:20):
but he's like, well, now, I'm not going to say
that they would have and then you just kind of
go deeper and deeper with him and then eventually, yeah,
they would have won. Yeah, if I was the offensive coordinator,
if I hadn't been taken out of the game, Yeah,
they would have won that game. And it's like whoa, Okay,
and it's like, yeah, Pete Carroll is fun to work for. Um,
I don't use the word fun for Alabama. I mean
he like he's got a lot going on in his mind.
(06:41):
And as much as he tries to kind of, you know,
stay between the emotional forty yard lines, um, he you know,
there's there's just so much going on that when it
seeps out, it's it's beyond fascinating. No, And I think
it's important to remember Jim Miller joining me best sell
author origins The Origin of a Champion about Nick Saban,
(07:03):
that Nick did Lane a great service hiring him. Lane's
reputation was garbage, he had, the USC disaster he had,
He'd been seen as very difficult to work with. Saban
really saved his career. But I do find it's fascinating
that Kiffen loves to tweak Nick, even on Twitter. And
(07:23):
I think there's a rock star quality to Lane that
Nick secretly kind of respects but is annoyed by. If
that makes sense, Lane, kind it makes sense. And I
think it they fed into each other because Kiffin told
me something which I started laughing about, because you know,
obviously he had that experience in Tennessee, which was you know,
(07:43):
a tat askew as Jerry Seinfeld would say. And he
found when Lane heard that everybody in the SEC had
gotten wind of the possibility that Nick would even be
thinking about her and Kiffn Kiffin said, oh, I got
the job now because he knew that Saban wanted to
be his own guy, and he wanted to make sure
(08:05):
that he wasn't going to listen to anyone saying you
can't who he can hire and who he can hire.
So the more the protests were like, no, we don't
want Line Kivin in the SEC and don't even think
about it, like Linkivin gun Sure enough, I got the job.
Nobody's gonna tell nobody's gonna tell Nick Saban who he
can hire. Yeah. In the three episode series about Saban,
Jim Miller interviews Joe Girardi, Lane Kiffen, and Nick's wife Terry. Now,
(08:29):
let's let's move into that. Nick doesn't give us a
lot of Nick. He talks about the process. Uh, he
talks about things that football fans would be fascinated with.
My hunches that Terry's got much more power in the relationship. Um,
then maybe the casual football fan would think, Um, In fact,
(08:50):
I think they call her in the South, Miss Terry, Um,
what what was he willing to? You know you, first
of all, the fact that you sat down with Terry
is great. That makes me want to listen to this episode.
Can you give me don't don't give me too much.
I want people to go in and listen to this.
But what was a fascinating, fascinating dynamic here with Terry
(09:11):
and Nick? To you? Well, I mean, look, they've been
married for over forty five years. They knew each other
in like junior high school, so I definitely wanted to
I mean, I take the word origins kind of too
seriously sometimes, but let's face it. I started this podcast
with West Virginia and Nick's dad, Big Nick, and talked
to Nick about it and talked to Terry about it.
(09:33):
But there's a there's a sequence at the end of
episode one which, um, you know, I've heard from a
lot of Alabama fans in the last twenty four hours. She's, um,
she's pretty extraordinary and uh when when she was going
through this with me, I must say it was it
was pretty impressive. It really was almost startling. And I
(09:53):
think that you know, what you begin to realize is
that it's almost like he controls everything and then she
controls him, not that she controlled him, so to speak.
But I don't think who else does he look up to?
Do you know what I mean? So many people like
Joe Girardi is there, Oh my gosh. I invited Nick
to come and speak to the Yankees, and he's been
a mentor and he's been I mean, it's like, you know,
(10:13):
you almost feel like the pope. And Lassie loves Nick
Saban or at least look up to him, and yet
so who does he look up to? And I thought
it was really interesting to kind of delve into that
with Terry. The other thing that I kind of poured
around with with Saban was I said to him, would
you like to work for yourself? And he said, I
(10:36):
had never really thought about that, And I said, well,
think about the way you are as a boss, now,
think about would you like to work for you? And
he gave like a pretty thoughtful answer. It was and
I could tell that he was really trying to be
honest with it, and I thought that was fascinating that
he would at least, you know, try and go there
on something like that. But the two of them are
(10:58):
rather formidable get back to Jim in a second. Upstart
has revolutionized how we borrow money by going beyond the
traditional FICA score to offer personal loans, taking into account
factors like your job, experience, education when determining your interest
rates debt. Some have a lot, some have a little.
The vast majority of us have some. But the path
(11:21):
to financial freedom can look awfully bleak when you have
high interest debt, and if your FICA score isn't great,
it can make breaking out of the revolving debt cycle
harder than it needs to be. Thankfully we have a
sponsor here, Upstart. It's revolutionizing the process of personal lending.
They offer personal loans, but they're not like the ones
(11:43):
your bank or credit union provide. Upstart goes beyond the
traditional FICA score when assessing your credit worthiness. In fact,
they may actually reward you based on your education, your
job history in the form of a smarter interest rate.
Over one hundred thousand people have used upstart to pay
off credit cards. Boy pay those things down, or pay
them off, fund their wedding, simply make a large purchase.
(12:06):
Now it is your turn. Okay, hurry go to upstart
dot com slash herd to find out how low your
upstart rate is. Checking your rate only takes two minutes
and will not affect your credit. That's upstart dot Com.
Slash herd loans are made by Cross River Bank and
FDIC ensured, New Jersey State Chartered Commercial Bank. Jim Miller
(12:28):
joining me, best selling author, host of the podcast origins
with James Andrew Miller. It is available on iTunes. I'm
a listener past series by the way up in Curb
Your Enthusiasm College Game Day. Is Nicke aware? I mean
he's a sixty year old guy, mid sixties, He's still
got incredible passion. Sometimes he blows up on television, and
unlike most jobs, his job is public. It's public consumption.
(12:54):
Is he aware sometimes when he loses it that it's it?
Perhaps is damaging to his brand? I mean, how does
he again, I'll use the word reconcile with his success
and sometimes his passion like overflows that he's going crazy
and throwing a headset. You ever think that sometimes he thinks, God,
I wish I wouldn't have done that. No, in fact,
(13:15):
I might even go so far as to say that
he may have already planned that out in his head.
I think that there are times when look, I talked
about it with Kivin, because there were times that he
took Kivin to the you know, to the woodshet and
like literally on camera. He knew the cameras were on them,
and he just chewed him out right on the sidelines
(13:35):
in front of the team, in front of those fans,
in in front of a national television audience. And I
believe that there's that Nick Saban is so disciplined, or
you could use Mokey Villian, or you could use just
so into the process for himself that that was part
of an overall designed at that game, for that game,
(13:57):
And it may have been to literally incentivize the team
or to warn the team that he's in that kind
of mood. It may have been because he really did
need to shut Kiffi down. And he may have decided
that morning in the shower, if Kiffen gets crazy on
me again today, I am going to literally chew hisself
in front of everyone, so I don't have to deal
(14:17):
with him for the rest of the game. One like that.
I mean, I don't think he's afraid, let's put this on.
I don't think he's afraid to go to those kinds
of places and worry about what it's going to do
to his imager brand. In fact, with a lot of people,
it only enhances it. Yeah, that's interesting. You know, happy,
happy can be a little you know, it's a term.
(14:40):
Is somebody happy? I think Nick is certainly satisfied with
his place. He's the greatest coach in the history of
college football. I mean, if you think of how long
USC's dynasty was, it was half as long as Alabama's
current dynasty, and Alabama's probably got a much longer tail
another five years. If I said happiness, content, do you
(15:03):
think that, how do those words line up with sabing
to you? Well, I think it's like it's almost like
there's just it's a different His planet doesn't like his word.
His universe doesn't operate around the sun. It's like you
when you go to work. You I've seen you your
(15:25):
culture there. You're you know, you're hanging out with everybody.
You're calm with everybody. Of course, everybody's working hard, but
you can let yourself relax. You can joke around with
everybody you want. You know, your set is a very
comfortable set. You walk into the building and I talked
about this in the podcast. You walk into that athletic
building in Tuscaloosa and it's intense. You can impalpable, and
(15:50):
like from secretaries to maintenance people, like there's not a
lot of margin of error. There's high expectations on everyone.
And the weird thing is about this particular ecosystem is
like we've always been trained at when people are really
uptight and when they feel like you know, they're on
a high wire act and there's no net, they're not
going to do their best, and somehow this is the exception.
(16:13):
This is like why Nick Saban and Alabama sometimes can
be an outlier because it is that tense, and yet
he's able to get the best of people from that position.
And so that means that you have to have a
certain type of player, you have to have a certain
type of employee who is willing to operate like that.
(16:34):
And you know, that's part of the whole training and
the process, because it's like an indoctrination. You're going to
you're it's like you're going to breathe different air. So
I'm sorry, but that's a long way of answering your question,
which is I don't think fun happiness calm or whatever.
Those are not things that you know as part of
(16:57):
the football experience of coaching or even in the off season,
that Nick Saban necessarily wants, needs, delivers, or embraces. It's
just not It's just he's just wired a different way.
And so if you buy into that system, then you're
probably going to do really well. And for those people
who can't buy in that system, go someplace else because
(17:19):
you are not going to be able to survive. It's
a three episode season of Origins with Nick Saban and
he talks to Joe Girardi and Lane Kiffen and Nick's wife,
Miss Terry. I think they called her in Tuscaloosa. I'm
so glad you tackled this. This is I always think
of you as as you know, you do these massive,
(17:39):
almost international level things CIA and live from New York
and you know college football. It feels so southern to me.
So I love the fact that you went deep diving
down there, Jim. It's a pleasure. By the way, I
don't know where you're at now. We need to have
coffee again. We have a lot to discuss. Yeah, the
world is changing every day. Netflix is taking over the world.
(18:04):
I may be on the street soon. I don't know
what the future of television is. It feels like it's
been more It's more fluid now than ever, doesn't it.
I think that sometimes in uh, you know, in our lifetime.
You look, you know five years ago, boy, a lot
was going on then. We didn't realize it. Now in
current day, we realize it every day that so much
(18:24):
is going on really right before. Yeah, video on demand.
I was telling my wife the other day, I only
go to movies now if my son wants to go.
So I've seen Aunt Man, I've seen anything with you know,
anything with Robert Downey. It's it's an interesting world. Where
I was a theater kid, you know, I love going
to the movies, and now I sit home with my
(18:46):
wife and I binge watched television and the audience, the
consumer now controls it on their terms. And I don't
know if I love it. I don't know if I'm
petrified of it. But we live in a different world
and the smarter going to survive and then we're going
to survive. Has covering it changed for you? Covering the media,
do you sense a palpable fear and anxiety within the industry?
(19:09):
I think that there's a lot of shaking out that's happening,
obviously when you look at Disney and Fox and other things.
But I think that the real we're finally at a
point now where people are saying, Okay, we built all
these incredible pipes, and we got our speeds down, and
we got delivery systems down and distribution to your Apple
watching all that, and now we've kind of like made
(19:30):
this big circle and we're back to okay, but what
is the content? Yes? And you know what, in some ways,
whenever I get car sick over the state of the
industry or out how crazy some things are, in some
ways that's saving grace because it really is going to
come back to people like yourselves and how you do
(19:51):
interviews and how you tell stories and the way that
you want to present your own brand, and whether or
not people are going to want to spend time with you,
because there's there's hundreds, if not thousands, of choices. And
so I think now more than ever, you know that
old Cockney expression that we had like ten years ago,
content is king. Now Content is like the only thing
(20:13):
because everything else is kind of like beside the point.
We can get it anywhere so I think that you
know the idea of how people are going to differentiate
themselves and what kind of stories they're going to tell
and how long they're going to tell those stories. That
to me is like, that's the real interesting thing for
the next couple of years. You know, it's interesting, Jim.
There's two models. There is the Rush Limbaugh model. I'm
(20:34):
going to create, Bill Maher model, I'm just going to
do content. Then there's the Oprah Glenn Beck model is
I'm going to own stuff, I'm going to be the
CEO and do content. And I have come to terms
that I create content and I don't have the I
don't have the personality to be a boss to multiple
people and do that day to day hiring. Uh. You know,
(20:58):
it's really it's funny, but in my when I started
this career, you didn't have the option. You were a
content provider. Now there are people, dynamic performers that can
do both. They can do content or they can go
Glenn Beck, they can go Oprah, they can go Howard Stern.
And I think your point is like, if you're a
(21:18):
quarterback that throws from the pocket, don't try to be
Russell Wilson, Like doing two things in this industry sometimes, Jim,
I guess my point is choices create anxiety, and I
think anxiety dilutes the creative content. So I have pulled
back more into just doing content. But I think now
(21:39):
broadcasters are offered both content and running a business, and
I think it's problematic. I think I go back to
certain people, and the reason I go to Bill Maher
or the reason I will go to you know, regardless
of the person, I like the quality of their of
their product. And I think sometimes and I'm just long
winded here, once you move past the Oprah Glenbeck, you
(22:02):
go into that stage, I fear that it dilutes my content.
That makes sense, right, I guess I'm going to just say,
in your case, it may not wind up being so
binary con because three years from now, you can find
somebody to run something for you. But you may all
of a sudden find a twenty four twenty five year
(22:23):
old who's you think is incredibly talented and who has
a wonderful future ahead, and they're going to come to
you and say, I want you to mentor me, and
I want you to executive produce my show. It's not
going to take a lot of your time, but I
need your input, and so it may not just be you.
You know, that's part of this, you know, your ecosystem.
(22:45):
It may be that you're going to find time, especially
as you be more critically let's say, protective of your time,
that you may have time to start mentoring and start
kind of shepherding some other things that are important to
you that you can't do just by yourself. And then
you just hire somebody to run that company. I mean, oh,
(23:07):
you know Oprah likes to run her company, and Glenn
Beck likes to run his company. But that doesn't mean
that you'd have to do that. You get somebody that
you really trust and you have faith in, and then
you just tell them you take care of that stuff.
I want to take care of the content, and the
content may wind up including other things other than your
own shows. Are you available for hire currently, Jim Miller, Jim,
(23:31):
it's a pleasure. Let's get coffee soon. Thank you so
much for having me. Okay, best selling author folks. It's
on iTunes origins. It's called The Origins of a Champion
in the first episode's House of Saban out on iTunes.
Good stuff. Thanks Jim, Thanks so much,
Hi, everybody, Welcome to our Saturday podcast. Really interesting guest
today who you know? Jim Miller, best selling author, will
be coming up. But before we start, I want to
talk about Peter Millar. It's a company founded seventeen years
ago in two thousand and one, with a single cashmere sweater,
and it's grown into something I love. A premium American
lifestyle brand featuring a wide range of cansual sportswear, tailored men'swear,
(00:23):
really luxury performance golf apparel. I get fit, I get style,
I get quality. To me, Peter Millar is now the
new standard in men'swear I've I've been wearing it all
spring and summer. I went to Utah this summer. I
was wearing the shorts and the golf shirts every day.
They have performance shirts. You get the value, the style,
(00:45):
and the quality. What I love about it is that
it works for everything. I get up in the morning,
go for coffee, looks classy. Afternoon, go hit golf balls,
looks great. Want to go to dinner in the summer,
but I don't want to wear heavy clothes. Looks fantastic.
The performance shorts I'm wearing are the most comfortable I've
ever worn. Right now, you can head over to petermlar
(01:07):
dot com slash her to check out some of their favorites.
Be sure to use my link and you'll get complimentary shipping.
That's key in a free hat. That's Peter Millar m
I l lar dot com slash Herd. Peter Millar dot
com slash Herd founded seventeen years ago with a single
cashmere sweater. It's a premium American lifestyle brand, all sorts,
(01:33):
wide range of casual sportswear. Well, he's my friend. He's
a best selling author. He's written several books and I've
read all of them front to back multiple times. Live
from New York. His book about Saturday Night Live as
a must read ESPN book, The Powerhouse CIA. He's also
the host of a podcast now fascinating work as always
deep diving on stuff, Origins with James Andrew Miller. You
(01:55):
can get it on iTunes and right now. His latest
session is Origins is called Origins of a Champion. About
Nick Saban. Now, what I think of you, I think
of these big broad I mean you're you're you're a
tennis player. You write these in depth books and I think,
oh God, Nick Saban. He's not going to let you
in on anything. He's going to be terribly difficult. So
(02:17):
your perceptions and the reality of dealing with Sabans, How
did you kind of reconcile all that stuff? How did
it work for you? Well? For me, I mean, going
down to Tuscaloosa to sit down with Nick Saban and
be you know, at Alabama is kind of like dealing
with some of these broader topics that I do books
on and o they're reporting on because Alabama football and
(02:40):
Nick Saban are both such huge brands, right, I mean,
it's almost like beyond the confines of college football, and
so it was very interesting for me to just to
kind of understand and to try and dig into, you know,
why this keeps happening, why this guy been so successful
(03:02):
down there, and even went into a little bit of
you know, why there wasn't that kind of success in
the NFL forum. You know, let's talk about that. You know,
I've always seen Nick is kind of a linear thinker,
compartmentalize his stuff. He talks about the process it is.
It can be redundant and repetitive and reductive, but that's
(03:22):
I think that in football that works the NFL has
got a little more star power, where the player is
a bigger star. In college, the coach is the star.
When you look at his NFL failures, and I use
that loosely because he was turning things around, but he
didn't get the doctors to give him Drew Brees, or
I think he'd still be in the NFL. In the
Bama dynasty is never created. What didn't work in the NFL,
(03:46):
in your opinion, that does work fabulously in college. Well,
I think, first of all, you're smart for contextual purposes
to point out the Drew Brees thing, because look, there
have been a lot of smart coaches, and if you
don't have in the NFL is if you don't have
a quarterback, then you're climate everston a cold, and you're shorts.
So I think if he had had Drew Brees, then
(04:07):
I think it's worth thinking that things might have been different.
But I think to the larger point in your question,
it is, Look, there's a very different dynamic. And I
talked to a lot of former players there. When you're
eighteen and nineteen years old and you haven't you know,
you're just you're you're out of your house for the
first time, and you're in this new system. These the
coaches have, particularly somebody with a reputation like Saban, there's
(04:32):
much more control over these players than NFL players have.
And as a result, I think that you can have
a level of discipline and that fear of punishment and
a lot more for lack of a better phrase, law
and order on you in your program then you can
in the NFL. And I think that that's why. Look,
(04:53):
I start the podcast off by talking about the fact
that after last year's championship, you know, there were NFL
teams that were interested in him coming over, and I think,
to his credit, that's why he decided, you know what,
I'm gonna stay here. I like this, I like this dynamic.
I like the control I have, and I don't need
to be going to the NFL now at this stage
(05:14):
of my career. Um, it's just, you know, particularly when
you talk about the process, because the process is it's
it's not only redundant, but it's redundant by design. That's
the whole thing. Like you know, you're you're like literally practicing,
not until you can't get it, until you get it right,
it's until you can't get it wrong. That's very you know,
(05:36):
it's to some degree it's factory work, you know what
I mean, it's just no mistakes. Um. You interviewed Lane Kiffen,
Joe girardi Is wife. Let's start with Kiffen. Uh Kiffen
has some star power. In fact, of all Nick's assistants,
Lane has the most star power. What's Nick's what does
What does Lane say about that time in Cataskaloosa? Oh?
(05:59):
My god, is the gift that keeps giving because it's
like he's like a he's like an iceberg because you
see just a little bit of him, but then all
this stuff is going on underneath the surface. And one
of the things that I was, you know, I think
able to do with him what they did so interesting
for me is there's like a little it's not passive aggressive,
(06:20):
but he's like, well, now, I'm not going to say
that they would have and then you just kind of
go deeper and deeper with him and then eventually, yeah,
they would have won. Yeah, if I was the offensive coordinator,
if I hadn't been taken out of the game, Yeah,
they would have won that game. And it's like whoa, Okay,
and it's like, yeah, Pete Carroll is fun to work for. Um,
I don't use the word fun for Alabama. I mean
he like he's got a lot going on in his mind.
(06:41):
And as much as he tries to kind of, you know,
stay between the emotional forty yard lines, um, he you know,
there's there's just so much going on that when it
seeps out, it's it's beyond fascinating. No, And I think
it's important to remember Jim Miller joining me best sell
author origins The Origin of a Champion about Nick Saban,
(07:03):
that Nick did Lane a great service hiring him. Lane's
reputation was garbage, he had, the USC disaster he had,
He'd been seen as very difficult to work with. Saban
really saved his career. But I do find it's fascinating
that Kiffen loves to tweak Nick, even on Twitter. And
(07:23):
I think there's a rock star quality to Lane that
Nick secretly kind of respects but is annoyed by. If
that makes sense, Lane, kind it makes sense. And I
think it they fed into each other because Kiffin told
me something which I started laughing about, because you know,
obviously he had that experience in Tennessee, which was you know,
(07:43):
a tat askew as Jerry Seinfeld would say. And he
found when Lane heard that everybody in the SEC had
gotten wind of the possibility that Nick would even be
thinking about her and Kiffn Kiffin said, oh, I got
the job now because he knew that Saban wanted to
be his own guy, and he wanted to make sure
(08:05):
that he wasn't going to listen to anyone saying you
can't who he can hire and who he can hire.
So the more the protests were like, no, we don't
want Line Kivin in the SEC and don't even think
about it, like Linkivin gun Sure enough, I got the job.
Nobody's gonna tell nobody's gonna tell Nick Saban who he
can hire. Yeah. In the three episode series about Saban,
Jim Miller interviews Joe Girardi, Lane Kiffen, and Nick's wife Terry. Now,
(08:29):
let's let's move into that. Nick doesn't give us a
lot of Nick. He talks about the process. Uh, he
talks about things that football fans would be fascinated with.
My hunches that Terry's got much more power in the relationship. Um,
then maybe the casual football fan would think, Um, In fact,
(08:50):
I think they call her in the South, Miss Terry, Um,
what what was he willing to? You know you, first
of all, the fact that you sat down with Terry
is great. That makes me want to listen to this episode.
Can you give me don't don't give me too much.
I want people to go in and listen to this.
But what was a fascinating, fascinating dynamic here with Terry
(09:11):
and Nick? To you? Well, I mean, look, they've been
married for over forty five years. They knew each other
in like junior high school, so I definitely wanted to
I mean, I take the word origins kind of too
seriously sometimes, but let's face it. I started this podcast
with West Virginia and Nick's dad, Big Nick, and talked
to Nick about it and talked to Terry about it.
(09:33):
But there's a there's a sequence at the end of
episode one which, um, you know, I've heard from a
lot of Alabama fans in the last twenty four hours. She's, um,
she's pretty extraordinary and uh when when she was going
through this with me, I must say it was it
was pretty impressive. It really was almost startling. And I
(09:53):
think that you know, what you begin to realize is
that it's almost like he controls everything and then she
controls him, not that she controlled him, so to speak.
But I don't think who else does he look up to?
Do you know what I mean? So many people like
Joe Girardi is there, Oh my gosh. I invited Nick
to come and speak to the Yankees, and he's been
a mentor and he's been I mean, it's like, you know,
(10:13):
you almost feel like the pope. And Lassie loves Nick
Saban or at least look up to him, and yet
so who does he look up to? And I thought
it was really interesting to kind of delve into that
with Terry. The other thing that I kind of poured
around with with Saban was I said to him, would
you like to work for yourself? And he said, I
(10:36):
had never really thought about that, And I said, well,
think about the way you are as a boss, now,
think about would you like to work for you? And
he gave like a pretty thoughtful answer. It was and
I could tell that he was really trying to be
honest with it, and I thought that was fascinating that
he would at least, you know, try and go there
on something like that. But the two of them are
(10:58):
rather formidable get back to Jim in a second. Upstart
has revolutionized how we borrow money by going beyond the
traditional FICA score to offer personal loans, taking into account
factors like your job, experience, education when determining your interest
rates debt. Some have a lot, some have a little.
The vast majority of us have some. But the path
(11:21):
to financial freedom can look awfully bleak when you have
high interest debt, and if your FICA score isn't great,
it can make breaking out of the revolving debt cycle
harder than it needs to be. Thankfully we have a
sponsor here, Upstart. It's revolutionizing the process of personal lending.
They offer personal loans, but they're not like the ones
(11:43):
your bank or credit union provide. Upstart goes beyond the
traditional FICA score when assessing your credit worthiness. In fact,
they may actually reward you based on your education, your
job history in the form of a smarter interest rate.
Over one hundred thousand people have used upstart to pay
off credit cards. Boy pay those things down, or pay
them off, fund their wedding, simply make a large purchase.
(12:06):
Now it is your turn. Okay, hurry go to upstart
dot com slash herd to find out how low your
upstart rate is. Checking your rate only takes two minutes
and will not affect your credit. That's upstart dot Com.
Slash herd loans are made by Cross River Bank and
FDIC ensured, New Jersey State Chartered Commercial Bank. Jim Miller
(12:28):
joining me, best selling author, host of the podcast origins
with James Andrew Miller. It is available on iTunes. I'm
a listener past series by the way up in Curb
Your Enthusiasm College Game Day. Is Nicke aware? I mean
he's a sixty year old guy, mid sixties, He's still
got incredible passion. Sometimes he blows up on television, and
unlike most jobs, his job is public. It's public consumption.
(12:54):
Is he aware sometimes when he loses it that it's it?
Perhaps is damaging to his brand? I mean, how does
he again, I'll use the word reconcile with his success
and sometimes his passion like overflows that he's going crazy
and throwing a headset. You ever think that sometimes he thinks, God,
I wish I wouldn't have done that. No, in fact,
(13:15):
I might even go so far as to say that
he may have already planned that out in his head.
I think that there are times when look, I talked
about it with Kivin, because there were times that he
took Kivin to the you know, to the woodshet and
like literally on camera. He knew the cameras were on them,
and he just chewed him out right on the sidelines
(13:35):
in front of the team, in front of those fans,
in in front of a national television audience. And I
believe that there's that Nick Saban is so disciplined, or
you could use Mokey Villian, or you could use just
so into the process for himself that that was part
of an overall designed at that game, for that game,
(13:57):
And it may have been to literally incentivize the team
or to warn the team that he's in that kind
of mood. It may have been because he really did
need to shut Kiffi down. And he may have decided
that morning in the shower, if Kiffen gets crazy on
me again today, I am going to literally chew hisself
in front of everyone, so I don't have to deal
(14:17):
with him for the rest of the game. One like that.
I mean, I don't think he's afraid, let's put this on.
I don't think he's afraid to go to those kinds
of places and worry about what it's going to do
to his imager brand. In fact, with a lot of people,
it only enhances it. Yeah, that's interesting. You know, happy,
happy can be a little you know, it's a term.
(14:40):
Is somebody happy? I think Nick is certainly satisfied with
his place. He's the greatest coach in the history of
college football. I mean, if you think of how long
USC's dynasty was, it was half as long as Alabama's
current dynasty, and Alabama's probably got a much longer tail
another five years. If I said happiness, content, do you
(15:03):
think that, how do those words line up with sabing
to you? Well, I think it's like it's almost like
there's just it's a different His planet doesn't like his word.
His universe doesn't operate around the sun. It's like you
when you go to work. You I've seen you your
(15:25):
culture there. You're you know, you're hanging out with everybody.
You're calm with everybody. Of course, everybody's working hard, but
you can let yourself relax. You can joke around with
everybody you want. You know, your set is a very
comfortable set. You walk into the building and I talked
about this in the podcast. You walk into that athletic
building in Tuscaloosa and it's intense. You can impalpable, and
(15:50):
like from secretaries to maintenance people, like there's not a
lot of margin of error. There's high expectations on everyone.
And the weird thing is about this particular ecosystem is
like we've always been trained at when people are really
uptight and when they feel like you know, they're on
a high wire act and there's no net, they're not
going to do their best, and somehow this is the exception.
(16:13):
This is like why Nick Saban and Alabama sometimes can
be an outlier because it is that tense, and yet
he's able to get the best of people from that position.
And so that means that you have to have a
certain type of player, you have to have a certain
type of employee who is willing to operate like that.
(16:34):
And you know, that's part of the whole training and
the process, because it's like an indoctrination. You're going to
you're it's like you're going to breathe different air. So
I'm sorry, but that's a long way of answering your question,
which is I don't think fun happiness calm or whatever.
Those are not things that you know as part of
(16:57):
the football experience of coaching or even in the off season,
that Nick Saban necessarily wants, needs, delivers, or embraces. It's
just not It's just he's just wired a different way.
And so if you buy into that system, then you're
probably going to do really well. And for those people
who can't buy in that system, go someplace else because
(17:19):
you are not going to be able to survive. It's
a three episode season of Origins with Nick Saban and
he talks to Joe Girardi and Lane Kiffen and Nick's wife,
Miss Terry. I think they called her in Tuscaloosa. I'm
so glad you tackled this. This is I always think
of you as as you know, you do these massive,
(17:39):
almost international level things CIA and live from New York
and you know college football. It feels so southern to me.
So I love the fact that you went deep diving
down there, Jim. It's a pleasure. By the way, I
don't know where you're at now. We need to have
coffee again. We have a lot to discuss. Yeah, the
world is changing every day. Netflix is taking over the world.
(18:04):
I may be on the street soon. I don't know
what the future of television is. It feels like it's
been more It's more fluid now than ever, doesn't it.
I think that sometimes in uh, you know, in our lifetime.
You look, you know five years ago, boy, a lot
was going on then. We didn't realize it. Now in
current day, we realize it every day that so much
(18:24):
is going on really right before. Yeah, video on demand.
I was telling my wife the other day, I only
go to movies now if my son wants to go.
So I've seen Aunt Man, I've seen anything with you know,
anything with Robert Downey. It's it's an interesting world. Where
I was a theater kid, you know, I love going
to the movies, and now I sit home with my
(18:46):
wife and I binge watched television and the audience, the
consumer now controls it on their terms. And I don't
know if I love it. I don't know if I'm
petrified of it. But we live in a different world
and the smarter going to survive and then we're going
to survive. Has covering it changed for you? Covering the media,
do you sense a palpable fear and anxiety within the industry?
(19:09):
I think that there's a lot of shaking out that's happening,
obviously when you look at Disney and Fox and other things.
But I think that the real we're finally at a
point now where people are saying, Okay, we built all
these incredible pipes, and we got our speeds down, and
we got delivery systems down and distribution to your Apple
watching all that, and now we've kind of like made
(19:30):
this big circle and we're back to okay, but what
is the content? Yes? And you know what, in some ways,
whenever I get car sick over the state of the
industry or out how crazy some things are, in some
ways that's saving grace because it really is going to
come back to people like yourselves and how you do
(19:51):
interviews and how you tell stories and the way that
you want to present your own brand, and whether or
not people are going to want to spend time with you,
because there's there's hundreds, if not thousands, of choices. And
so I think now more than ever, you know that
old Cockney expression that we had like ten years ago,
content is king. Now Content is like the only thing
(20:13):
because everything else is kind of like beside the point.
We can get it anywhere so I think that you
know the idea of how people are going to differentiate
themselves and what kind of stories they're going to tell
and how long they're going to tell those stories. That
to me is like, that's the real interesting thing for
the next couple of years. You know, it's interesting, Jim.
There's two models. There is the Rush Limbaugh model. I'm
(20:34):
going to create, Bill Maher model, I'm just going to
do content. Then there's the Oprah Glenn Beck model is
I'm going to own stuff, I'm going to be the
CEO and do content. And I have come to terms
that I create content and I don't have the I
don't have the personality to be a boss to multiple
people and do that day to day hiring. Uh. You know,
(20:58):
it's really it's funny, but in my when I started
this career, you didn't have the option. You were a
content provider. Now there are people, dynamic performers that can
do both. They can do content or they can go
Glenn Beck, they can go Oprah, they can go Howard Stern.
And I think your point is like, if you're a
(21:18):
quarterback that throws from the pocket, don't try to be
Russell Wilson, Like doing two things in this industry sometimes, Jim,
I guess my point is choices create anxiety, and I
think anxiety dilutes the creative content. So I have pulled
back more into just doing content. But I think now
(21:39):
broadcasters are offered both content and running a business, and
I think it's problematic. I think I go back to
certain people, and the reason I go to Bill Maher
or the reason I will go to you know, regardless
of the person, I like the quality of their of
their product. And I think sometimes and I'm just long
winded here, once you move past the Oprah Glenbeck, you
(22:02):
go into that stage, I fear that it dilutes my content.
That makes sense, right, I guess I'm going to just say,
in your case, it may not wind up being so
binary con because three years from now, you can find
somebody to run something for you. But you may all
of a sudden find a twenty four twenty five year
(22:23):
old who's you think is incredibly talented and who has
a wonderful future ahead, and they're going to come to
you and say, I want you to mentor me, and
I want you to executive produce my show. It's not
going to take a lot of your time, but I
need your input, and so it may not just be you.
You know, that's part of this, you know, your ecosystem.
(22:45):
It may be that you're going to find time, especially
as you be more critically let's say, protective of your time,
that you may have time to start mentoring and start
kind of shepherding some other things that are important to
you that you can't do just by yourself. And then
you just hire somebody to run that company. I mean, oh,
(23:07):
you know Oprah likes to run her company, and Glenn
Beck likes to run his company. But that doesn't mean
that you'd have to do that. You get somebody that
you really trust and you have faith in, and then
you just tell them you take care of that stuff.
I want to take care of the content, and the
content may wind up including other things other than your
own shows. Are you available for hire currently, Jim Miller, Jim,
(23:31):
it's a pleasure. Let's get coffee soon. Thank you so
much for having me. Okay, best selling author folks. It's
on iTunes origins. It's called The Origins of a Champion
in the first episode's House of Saban out on iTunes.
Good stuff. Thanks Jim, Thanks so much,
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.