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Saban uses ‘Training Days’ to change Alabama narrative

Alabama coach Nick Saban has used the ESPN all-access series to show a different, more fun-loving side of his personality.Getty Images

Alabama football coach Nick Saban, in a rare moment of insight, acknowledged a criticism his competitors often use against the Crimson Tide in recruiting.

 

“If you go there, you won’t have any fun,” Saban said.

 

While Saban certainly has earned a reputation for his singular focus and sometimes prickly demeanor, there’s a different side of college football’s most successful active coach that’s scarcely been exposed — the side of him driving his boat while players ride inner tubes at his lake house, playing around in the driveway on a scooter or dining with them at a team function.

 

That’s what makes Saban both polarizing and compelling. He does have a lighter side, but it’s not often in the public’s view.

 

That aspect of Saban is exactly what cameras set out to capture during ESPN’s four-part series, “Training Days: Rolling with the Tide.” The all-access show presented by AT&T ran throughout August on all of ESPN’s platforms, from three-minute segments on “SportsCenter” to hourlong episodes on ESPN and ESPN2.

 

The final episode aired last week. The four premiere airings of the show, which debuted on Wednesday nights on ESPN2, averaged 156,000 viewers. No rights fees or payments were exchanged between ESPN and Alabama or Saban.

 

Not only did the series provide a unique perspective into the national champions at work, it showed a completely different side of Saban, a playful and compassionate aspect of him that many people didn’t know existed.

 

For a coach who once complained after winning a national championship that he was missing valuable recruiting time, Saban has largely turned around his reputation with those outside the program by revealing more of himself, like he did in the all-access show on the Tide’s training camp.

 

What the series did was suggest that Saban, 66, is more teacher than task master, although he’s certainly capable of both.

 

Saban enjoys an afternoon on the lake with some of his players.

Sure, he’ll still get grumpy at press conferences and he’s not likely to share who his starting quarterback will be, but Saban has taken significant strides to establish Alabama as one of the more accessible programs in the country, at least among the national media. In fact, Saban wore a microphone during every day of training camp except for two scrimmages. It’s hard to be more accessible than that.

 

Lee Fitting, ESPN’s vice president of college sports, describes Saban as the most straightforward and reachable coach he deals with.

 

“I know the perception of Coach Saban comes from what they see at his weekly press conference, when he sometimes snaps at a ridiculous question,” Fitting said. “That is not the case with national media. He’s the best in the business with granting access.

 

“When I asked him about doing an all-access series, he really didn’t think about it that long. He said, ‘Our doors are open.’ … What people don’t understand is that he’s so open-minded and willing to push the envelope to be the first to try things.”

 

ESPN didn’t quite have carte blanche — Fitting asked Saban if the cameras could stay with the team through the opener last weekend against Louisville and he declined. But the recruiting benefits of all-access programming like “Rolling with the Tide” don’t escape Saban. The series took viewers inside every aspect of the program, from practice to meals to conditioning workouts.

 

“Let’s call it what it is,” Fitting said. “It’s a free recruiting video that requires no work on their part.”

 

Saban’s reference to Alabama’s players not having fun was part of a one-on-one conversation with NBA great Kobe Bryant, who earlier that August day spoke to the Tide’s players about defending their title.

 

Ellis Ponder, the team’s director of operations, works with Saban to bring in speakers during training camp, such as Charles Barkley and Ray Lewis in the past. They had been working with Bryant’s representatives since January to get him to Tuscaloosa. The subsequent conversation between Saban and Bryant was the highlight of the series and provided Saban with an unfiltered opportunity to respond to the claim that Alabama football players don’t have fun.

 

“The fun of it is knowing you did your best to do something very well,” Saban said.

 

The like-minded Bryant laughed at the notion that the defending champions don’t have fun. “Being excellent is fun,” Bryant said.

 

It was the kind of high-level exchange that likely wouldn’t happen with any other coach in the country, and Saban invited the cameras into his office to capture it all for the series.

 

“It’s amazing the number of people who just want to be around the team, be around coach,” said Greg Byrne, Alabama’s athletic director. “People see coach on game day and think that’s how he always is, but he’s got a sense of humor and he really thinks a lot about how his players can grow as people.”

 

ESPN, like a lot of networks and digital platforms, is enamored with the all-access format that’s become so popular. And the schools love it for the exposure.

 

ESPN used to produce a series of all-access shows about five years ago, featuring Alabama, Penn State, Ohio State and Oklahoma, Fitting said, “then for whatever reason we took a hiatus. So when we decided to start it up again this season, Alabama was the natural starting point.”

 

ESPN also uses a scaled-down version of the all-access show on SEC Network called “SEC Inside,” which features a different school each week during the season.

 

“The all-access deal is hot; everybody is doing it,” Fitting said. “And we just didn’t have a college football staple in the month of August, which seems a little crazy considering that college football is either our biggest property or one of our biggest. We should have something in the run-up to the season, so this series provided us with that.”

 

JM Associates out of Arkansas produced the series, although ESPN had a lead producer on the ground with the crew and the network had final say on the content.

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