Nick Saban is outspoken and often colorful. Here are the top 10 Saban quotes from his tenure at Alabama, with some of the harsher expletives deleted:
1. “And they ran through our ass like (crap) through a tin horn, man, and we could not stop them. Could not stop them.”
– Saban referenced a tougher-than-expected 2011 victory over Georgia Southern before last season’s victory over Charleston Southern, another Football Bowl Subdivision team.
2. “So I want everybody to think here for a second. How much does this game mean to you? ‘Cause it if means something to you, you can’t stand still. You understand? You play fast. You play strong. You go out there and dominate the man you’re playing against and you make his ass quit. That’s our trademark. That’s our M.O. as a team. That’s what people know us as.”
– Saban’s pregame speech to the team before a 2008 victory at LSU was captured on videotape and replayed often.
3. “I want everybody here to know, this is not the end. This is the beginning.”
– Saban was prophetic at the celebration event after Alabama won the 2009 national championship.
4. “Mediocre people hate high achievers, and high achievers hate mediocre people.”
– This quote from an appearance on the CBS show “60 Minutes” summed up a lot about Saban and some of his top players.
5. “If it was up to you, we’re six-foot under already. We’re dead and buried and gone. Gone. So, if that was the case, we’d have to get some respirators out or something down there to put life back in people.”
– Saban after Alabama’s 2015 victory over Georgia after talk from some pundits that UA’s dynasty was over following a loss two weeks earlier to Ole Miss.
6. “There were no arguments. Those are called ass-chewings.”
– Saban’s description of his shouting at offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin during a victory over Western Kentucky this season.
7. “Settle the (heck) down.”
– Saban to AJ McCarron when the quarterback got too hyped up during a 2011 game at Florida.
8. “We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish. We’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it.”
– Saban talking about his process during his introductory press conference in 2006.
9. “We kind of have a younger generation now that doesn’t always get told no. They don’t always get told, ‘This is exactly how you need to do it.’ So, they have this illusion they have all these choices. But the fact of the matter is, if you want to be good, you really don’t have a lot of choices because it takes what it takes.”
– Saban in 2015 after three former UA players were arrested.
10. “Changes in history usually occur after some kind of catastrophic event. It may be 9/11, which sort of changed the spirit of American relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, and that was a catastrophic event.”
– Saban evoked images of major tragedies after a 2007 loss to Louisiana-Monroe, briefly creating a controversy over his comparisons.
