How Nick Saban inspired the way I write
I have preserved a printed online version of a Sports Illustrated feature story for 15 years.
Not the actual magazine, the bound pages that showed up in mailboxes for years and caused grown men to run to them from their living room recliners. Just faded black and red ink on printer paper, which has begun to curl at the edges.
The story was published Aug. 21, 2007, a mere 11 days before Nick Saban’s first game as head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, and I read it as soon as it came out in the famed publication. I printed the web version a year and a half later, on Jan. 13, 2009, the first day of my JN-491: Magazine Writing class on the third floor of Reese Phifer Hall on The University of Alabama campus.
The five-sentence lede to that story written by Rick Bragg, my JN-491 professor, is bracketed in my Bic ink, the only section of six printed pages that I marked on. Bragg became an adviser, descriptive writing critic, friend, and mentor to me. I have kept those printed pages in the ugly purple JN-491 notebook since that January day 15 years ago. For inspiration. For the memory.
Before that JN-491 class kicked off my senior year of college, I was already interning at the ESPN-affiliated Crimson Confidential, which no longer exists but would have ruled the digital journalism landscape today. I was a staff writer and wrote feature stories for $20 each, if a questionable memory serves, so ask former senior writer Creg Stephenson if that’s accurate. I covered mostly high school football recruiting, and Alabama football, basketball, and softball.
I dug back in my saved archives in the wake of Saban announcing his retirement from coaching, and the earliest story I found was an October 2008 feature I wrote about former defensive lineman Luther Davis. I’d like to tell you what I remember. Stephenson assigned me that story, to write about the once-LSU-committed Crimson Tide player from Louisiana. During the weekly media availability with Saban, I chickened out on asking him a question about Davis. I knew what I wanted to ask, but I was starstruck, honestly. He hadn’t even won a national championship yet, and later that season would reach the Sugar Bowl against Utah, but I was still in awe by sitting in the front row at one of his press conferences. Stephenson asked the question for me.
“Luther has done a really good job and has played with consistency,” Saban said at the time. “It’s helped us be able to keep our players fresh throughout the game and I think that’s critical.”
Nothing earth-shattering. But a quote from Saban going into a story I was writing? Wow. Despite succumbing to the anxiousness of asking a question into a microphone in front of the likes of Cecil Hurt, Aaron Suttles, Ian Rapoport, and others, I got the story banged out. It was decent. With that story, I learned how to prepare for press conferences and interviews of any kind, how to contextualize questions and be smart in delivering them.
I covered a lot of Alabama football in 2008 and 2009. I wrote practice reports and features from home games. I wrote weekly about Cade Foster’s high school games and hobbies. I wrote about Marquis Maze earning A-Day Game MVP honors. I wrote about Trent Richardson’s impressive home debut in 2009 and how I saw Terrence Cody dunking basketballs at the UA recreational center.
During one practice, I remember all of us media hacks shooting the breeze with Alabama staffers after doing our jobs – seeing who was practicing and who wasn’t, who was wearing black no-contact jerseys, etc. – and hearing a booming voice. We all looked up from our lighthearted conversation to Saban shouting in our direction, yelling for the staffers to “Get them the heck out of here!” He might have said “heck.” I think he said something else. Anyway.
We only got to watch the stretching period, so it wasn’t like we were emailing offensive plays and defensive schemes to Urban Meyer, Les Miles, or Gene Chizik. I don’t think I saw Connor Stalions on hand that day.
I spent much of 2008 and 2009 writing about recruits, some who came to Alabama, some who didn’t. I remember seeing Eli Gold eat ice cream in the press box and Cecil Hurt indeed tote around a novel as thick as the Yellow Pages. I remember a Kentucky player nearly decapitating me on the sidelines near the end of a 2008 home game, a 17-14 win, the closest Alabama played all season.
Upon graduation, like most folks, I followed the program from afar. I moved to Mississippi and watched the disappointments of the 2010 season. I watched subsequent seasons from Moody, Trussville, and the infrequent trip to the Bryant-Denny Stadium upper deck.
I worked on a manuscript about a former Alabama football player in 2015 and 2016, one that never came to light, at least under my byline, but I did acquire a quote from Saban to use on the cover of that not-yet-published book. I remember when that email came through from the athletics department, and I celebrated in my garage. I think I was shooting hoops in the driveway. Me, at the time a has-been daily journalist working on a dream, receiving a front-cover blurb from the greatest college football coach of all time. I was floating.
I wrote these words because when big events happen, it’s what writers do, whether they’re still in the daily grind of journalism or pick and choose what freelance stories they pursue. I fit the latter at this time in my life. I wasn’t yet born when Bear Bryant died, but you can bet I’d have put pen to paper back then. So, that’s what I’ve done now, 15 years after I printed that Sports Illustrated feature story, the one that shaped how I tried to cover sports, news, crime, and everything else.
That five-sentence lede, by the way, ended with this one: “And now has come a great revival.”
I hope the next head coach to lead the Tide, whoever it is, can keep this crimson train of success rolling.
Roll Tide.
Gary Lloyd is a freelance journalist and author in Alabama.