Seriously. If you are a roller derby coach and you wonder why your skaters aren’t performing? Or god forbid slacking off, complaining, mouthing off, or maybe not even showing up? Shut up, sit down and listen to this guy talk. Listen to the whole thing. Then, show it to your entire coaching staff. Then, print out the transcript provided and MEMORIZE IT, and IMPLEMENT IT. Don’t give me any excuses either. I don’t care that this guy is a football coach! Deal with it. I don’t care if you think he doesn’t sound “fun”. Ummmm, he’s talking to children… pre-teens! But, he’s also an NFL coach, so he knows what’s up.

Just trust me, whether you coach junior derby, or adults, whatever you do can be improved upon by modeling this coach, Nick Saban.

Do you want to be a leader or not? Do you want respect or not? Ok, cool. Now just listen and thank me later…

 

Transcript

Sound of cheering. Thank you. First of all, I’d like to welcome all of you here. I think that I want you to know we all appreciate you taking the opportunity to come to the University of Alabama to come to football camp to do something to try to improve yourself as an athlete and a football player. That is something a lot of other people would not choose to do. So… And the purpose of this camp is to help you to improve as a player. We, you are going to do a lot of the things the same way that our players that play for us, do those things. And we are going to have the same expectations from a character and attitude standpoint, in terms of how you compete in what you do. So, I want you guys to know something, we are going to expect you to give effort, have enough mental toughness to persevere and sustain what we are asking you to do, and be responsible enough to execute and do it the way we are asking you to do it. Now none of those three things take any ability. You guys understand what I am saying? It doesn’t take any ability to give effort. It’s just, it is a mindset, it is an attitude, “I am going to finish the drill. I am going to go as hard as I can go. And I am going to give effort. I am going to the best I can at what I am trying to do, from an effort standpoint.” (pause) Mental toughness, guys. It’s hot outside. Nobody needs to say it again. It is going to be difficult. (pause) But, when you do things that are difficult, that’s what helps you get better. You have a better standard, a better capacity to work and invest your time in things, so that you can improve and get better. So, you can’t think about the negative things. You have got to think about the positive things of what you are trying to accomplish, so that you can go out there and finish things, and not get the ‘poor me’s about how you feel or how hot it is, or something that is affecting you that is outside of you. Don’t give up the control of what you decide and what you want to do. And then, guys, pay attention. Some of you guys are not paying attention now! Everybody in this room, everybody in this room should be looking at me right now. Everybody should be looking at me. You shouldn’t be messing with your shoes. You should be looking at me. And when a coach is talking to you, HE’S TEACHING YOU SOMETHING. You should be looking at him. Then you will know what you are supposed to do, and what is expected of you, so that you can go execute it and do it. And be responsible for your own self determination. That is accountability. Somebody tells you to do something. Somebody sets a standard of how you’re going to do it. You understand it. It’s defined. And then you show that you have the ability and the accountability to do it that way. I don’t care if it is your English teacher, your mother, or one of your coaches. It’s all the same. You know, playing sports is like a metaphor of life. Playing golf is like a metaphor of life. It doesn’t make any difference what the sport is. You have an opportunity to focus and make a play, or make a shot. It could be a good shot, or a bad shot, but the challenge is, is to make the next shot, all the time, to play the next play, all the time. Now, I am going to ask you a few questions. We are going to try to help you be more successful. But I want to know what. What is being successful? Successful people have consistency in performance. Everybody here is capable. But are you capable of doing it on a consistent basis? That means you do it over, and over, and over. And you do it the right way, every time. See, to me, guys, there are two things you have to have in order to be successful. First of all, you cannot be successful if you do not know what you want to do. If you do not know what you want to accomplish, if it’s not important to you, there is no way you are going to be successful at it, because you are not committed to it. So you have to have some passion for it. You got to want to do it. It has got to be important to you. You got to make a commitment to it, which means, you are not going to just start out and, as soon as it gets difficult, quit. You are going to make a commitment to a certain standard of what you are trying to accomplish. You are going to work, and do your best that you can, to do that. Look, guys, you can do one of two things with your time. You can invest your time, or you can spend it. When you invest your time, you make a goal and a decision of something you want to accomplish, and it something you want to do. Whether it is to make good grades in school, be a good athlete, be a good person, go down and do some community service and help somebody who is in need, whatever it is that you choose to do, you are investing your time in that. When you spend your time, you play Xbox. That’s spending time. It accomplishes nothing. Aand I know all of you are saying, “Oh, man, I need, I need to have my relaxation time.” You know what I say to that? (And excuse me all the mamas that are here), “That’s bullshit”. You don’t need to do that. You don’t need to do that. You need to figure out what you want to do, it could be ‘do the best you can in school’, and invest your time in that. Study, don’t play Xbox. Don’t play Nintendo. Blowing people up on that thing doesn’t do you any good. It doesn’t help you accomplish anything. Communicate with somebody else. Help somebody else. Have compassion for other people. There are lots of things that you can invest your time in. But if you do not learn how to work, you only get out of something what you put in it, you reap what you sow, you have to work. Life is difficult. Things that are worth accomplishing will be difficult. So you have to make a commitment to it. You have to invest your time in it. It takes a lot of hard work. (static) We can talk about all the championship (static) …far away from the center of the ring, and the lights and the stage and the T.V. and all that. They run (static) all those plays ..jogging.. …now.. The preparation and the work that he (no sound) …the fight… (no sound) …he was rewarded. So you’re going to reap what you sow guys, just like this camp. You are going to get exactly out of this camp what you put into it. And that’s why I started with three intangible things of effort, mental toughness to sustain, and be responsible for your own self determination in terms of understanding what is expected of you and being able to execute it. That is what you have to do on your team, to play any position that you want to play. Now look, guys, all these things go back down to one thing, perseverance. You have to stick with things, and use every experience that you have as an opportunity to learn. (pause) Every one of you guys is going to get corrected in this camp, for something that you did or didn’t do right. And get positive reinforcement. And maybe not quite so right, and get corrected. And whether or not you take that as criticism, or will you take that as somebody who is trying to help me and teach me to be better. Now look, guys, I coached the NFL for eight years. First thing I told the players, I said, “Look, I am going to coach you on every play, but everything I ever say to you is never a criticism. I am never criticizing you. I am going to tell you when you get it right. And I am going correct you when you get it wrong. So, I’m trying to teach you.” So, all the coaches here are going to try to teach you to do it better. So, nobody ever has to have a negative attitude about anybody correcting you. Listen, and learn. And try to do it better. That’s why you’re here. That’s why we’re here. And, guys, the greatest opportunity to learn is when you make a mistake. When you make a mistake th-that’s… Every year, when I talk to you guys I tell this story. And if you have been here before you’ve heard it. You know the Michael Jordan commercial about ten years ago? You probably never seen it. He’s all dressed up, in a limo. He’s going to a game. And the commentator comes on and says, showing him and says, “I have taken twenty-six game winning shots, and missed. I have played in 392 NBA games, and lost. And I have shot 2572 shots, and missed.” (pause) And then he walks into the locker room to go in and play the game and says, “but because I failed is why I succeed.” Look, guys, if you can’t overcome adversity, and you can’t learn from the negative things that happen to you, and continue to work towards your goals, you will never be able to accomplish anything of significance, because that’s what makes it significant, it’s difficult. So, it’s going to be difficult to accomplish. You can have no great victories in your life, unless you can overcome adversity, because the adversity is what makes it the challenge. (Pause) The last thing I am going to talk to guys today is pride in performance. Look, I don’t really care what you guys choose to do. I took pictures with almost all you guys, today. All right? And, everything that you do, you are selling yourself. And I asked you guys, each one of you, to come up to me and introduce yourself and say your name and say where you’re from. And, you know, everybody here did it in a little different way. But everybody made an impression on me, by how they did it, because every minute of every day you are selling something. You are either selling positive, or you’re selling negative. And when you put your head down and I can’t even hear your name and where you’re from, you’re not selling positive. You’re not selling confident. You’re selling shy. What are you afraid of me for? You don’t need to be afraid of me. You don’t need to be intimidated of me. I’m just like you. I was just like you when I was your age. I pumped gas every day when I was eleven years old. I worked at my Dad’s service station. You don’t need to be intimidated by me. You look me right in the eye, you say your name and let’s have a conversation. And what am I going to think of you? I’m going to think you are confident. I am going to think you are mature. I’m going to think you have a plan for what you want to do because you are showing strength and character by the way you present yourself. And that is what everybody should do. I ask our players all the time. One of them just asked me as I walked up, “What are you selling today, Coach?” I don’t want to know if you broke up with your girlfriend. I don’t want to know if you failed a math test. Because when you come out on the field to practice, you know what I want to see? I want to see somebody’s positive energy that is affecting somebody else to do it better. Not somebody that’s hang-dogging that’s going to make it worse, for everybody else, because of the negative energy they bring. And look guys, if you’re going to be an athlete, if you’re going to be somebody who competes in the world you have to be a relentless competitor. Now, does everybody understand what relentless is? I’m going to put it in… I’m going to break it down for you real easy. How many people watch ‘Friday the 13th’? Everybody in here’s seen that? Is that still something that people watch? Is that the one Freddy Kruger is on? Or is it ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’? I don’t even know. But what makes Freddy Kruger such a horrible character? What make him scare you to death? You can’t get rid of the guy, he never goes away. You can’t kill him. You think he’s dead and his hand comes through the wall and chokes you to death again. That’s ‘cause the guy’s relentless. That’s what relentless is. That’s what Freddy Kruger is. Now you guys getting the picture? So, if you’re a relentless competitor what do you have the ability to do? Always coming back, always coming back, always play the next play. No matter what happened on the last play, you can play the next play, like it has a history and life of its own and you can compete just as hard, with just as much effort, just as much toughness and just as much discipline to execute what you’re supposed to do, how you’re supposed to do it, the way it is supposed to get done, every play of the game. That’s being a relentless competitor. Now, the guy you’re playing against? He’s going to think you’re crazy. And he is going to say, “ I keep whupping this guy, but he keeps coming back”. And then by the fourth quarter you’re going to be wearing him out. That’s what you have to be, a relentless competitor, in anything you choose to do, if you’re going to be any good. And you have to do it to a standard that is important to you. And I mention one word here, guys, that is important here, ‘character’. Do you know what your character is? Do you know what your character is? It is the accumulation of your thoughts, your habits and your priorities, on a day to day basis. That’s what makes the choices that you make. It is the accumulation of your thoughts, your habits and your priorities, and the choices that you make, make you who you are. If you are a good guy, bad guy, hard worker, lazy, that’s what it makes you. So if you got the right thoughts, you got the right habits and the right priorities… And it probably starts with the right priorities, because that goes back to your commitments and what is important to you. And that’s the way you can be successful. But you got to have discipline to do any of these things. I just said what discipline is, does anyone know? Doing what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, the way it’s supposed to get done. And look, guys, if you don’t get anything else out of this talk but that… You are going to suffer through one of the two things in life. You are going through the pain of discipline, or the pain of disappointment. ‘Cause if you don’t have discipline, and you can’t do what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, the way it’s supposed to get done. As simple as that sounds, if you can’t do that, you are always going to be disappointed, ‘cause you’re never ever going to reach your potential at anything that you do. You’ll always be disappointed and think that you could have done it a little bit better, and you’ll always fail in the end when you think you should have succeeded, based on what word? Discipline. That is what we expect you to learn, and be able to do, in this camp, is to have the discipline to sustain and be a relentless competitor, and have pride in your performance of doing everything that you do at this camp the best that you can do it, because that becomes a habit. And habits are what help you to be successful. So we are going to try to help you to improve in this camp. I want you, when you leave here in three days, that you will have a better chance to be successful when you go home, at whatever it is you choose to do, not just being a football player, because you have better character, attitude to be able to go about what it takes to be successful. Which means get consistency in performance in the things that are important to you. Alright guys? Now what we’re going to do right now, is you guys are going to split up into your groups by position. You’re going to have a 15 minute meeting, and then we’re going to start practice… But look, guys, I am going to be out here every day. And I expect you to do it right. I don’t care if you are eight years old, or thirteen years old, there is no age limit on doing it right. Is there an age limit on doing it right? So, we’re all going to do it right? Alright, give me three. (crowd claps sloppily) You guy’s aint ready, give me three. (crowd claps a bit better) All right, that’s better. Thanks. (Saban leaves, handing off microphone)