Former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach\u00a0Nick Saban, widely considered to be the best in the historyof the sport, is the least surprising inductee in history to the College Football Hall of Fame this week.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the induction ceremony on Tuesday, Saban reflected on his\u00a0life and career, from growing up in West Virginia to reaching the pinnacle of the sport again and again\u00a0before eventually retiring.<\/p>\n
Despite it not being a shock to anyone himself included that he is being inducted, the gratitude for the life he\u2019s lived and lessons he\u2019s learned on and off the field was not lost on the legend.<\/p>\n
\u201cLittle did I know as a kid growing up in West Virginia pumping gas at my dad\u2019s service station that some of those lessons that I learned \u2014 it was beyond my imagination that I would ever end up here,\u201d Saban said\u00a0via Mike Rodak of Bama 247<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cRegardless of any responsibilities I was ever given as a kid, washing a car \u2014 if there were any streaks left on that navy blue Buick, you had to do it over. There was always a reckoning for what I did. That helped me tremendously, I think, from an accountability standpoint, because my dad used to always say, \u2018If you don\u2019t have the time to do it right the first time, how you going to find the time to do it again?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Thinking about his high school career, Nick Saban talked about what certainly sounded like how his legendary philosophy of never being satisfied began to form, and in true Coach Saban fashion, he credited his coaches and his parents for drilling that into him.<\/p>\n \u201cWe won an extraordinary amount of games when I was a PeeWee player and a high school player that culminated in a state championship. And after every one of those wins, I got my ass chewed out pretty good by my coaches and dad,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter all those wins, I finally asked my mom once, \u2018Why do I always seem to get reprimanded even when we win?\u2019 She said, \u2018It\u2019s not about winning. It\u2019s about you being the best you can be.\u2019 Those lessons helped me develop a process that helped a lot of other people be successful, helped us be successful and helped the people I worked with give us a chance to be successful. I\u2019d like to thank them for that.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s safe to say that fans in Tuscaloosa \u2014 who cheered Saban\u2019s team on to six national titles in the greatest and longest run of success college football has ever seen \u2014 might just owe all of those memories to Saban\u2019s parents and high school coaches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"