Coaching at Alabama: Navigating High Expectations and Scrutiny

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00:00 [MUSIC]

00:03 I think he's a terrific football coach, but

00:05 I don't think he's ever lived an experience quite like this.

00:09 And it'll be very interesting to see how he enjoys coaching at Alabama,

00:14 where everything is dissected.

00:16 Every last move you make, who you bring in, who you don't recruit,

00:21 who you do recruit, how you play them.

00:24 It's a different level, not in terms of the competition, but

00:29 in terms of the expectation and the attention.

00:32 He started out, he was a small college guy,

00:36 NAIA, University of Sioux Falls, and he was phenomenal there.

00:41 And then he went into relatively low profile FBS circumstances,

00:48 where he was an offensive coordinator and that sort of thing.

00:51 An offensive coach or coordinator for a series of programs.

00:55 I mean, his move to the big time was at Indiana,

00:57 which if he were the IU basketball coach, boy, the spotlight's on.

01:01 But as a football coach, they're just hoping you win more games than you lose.

01:05 So he's never really had this level of scrutiny.

01:09 And the reality is that between Bear Bryant and Nick Saban,

01:15 and with the very short rise to success of Gene Stallings,

01:20 there was a lot of disaster in Alabama.

01:24 I mean, this is not a no brainer job.

01:26 It is very easy to mess it up.

01:29 They had, I believe, six coaches, five coaches in between the Bear and Nick.

01:36 And all of them either struggled or

01:39 failed with the exception of Stallings, who won the 1992 National Championship.

01:44 But wasn't really desiring to stay there long,

01:47 because again, that spotlight is really hot.

01:50 [MUSIC]