Classes were in session at Kent State University in the fall of 1974, which meant freshman football players had to report to the library for mandatory study halls. That also meant the football team’s graduate assistant coaches had to report to the library, too, to supervise the freshmen.
One day as they sat watching the team’s youngest players do their homework, those two graduate assistant coaches found themselves reflecting on what they had learned as Kent State players under head coach Don James.
One of those grad assistants was former two-time All-Mid-American Conference tight end Gary Pinkel. The other was a highly respected former Kent State safety named Nick Saban. And what they discussed in the library that day, a concept ingrained in them by James, became a mantra that carried Pinkel through 191 career victories and Saban to five national championships and counting.
“One thing you got from the very beginning with Coach James, you understood the word ‘process’ ” Pinkel said.
“You know what you're doing on the 15th of January when you get back and you start school again. What you're doing is your preparing for that first game, in September. That day is important, because the process that happens in this organization that day, and then next day, will ultimately determine how good you are in the future.”
Saban’s immediate future is a Peach Bowl College Football Playoff semifinal matchup for his Alabama Crimson Tide against Washington, the school James led to 153 wins, four Rose Bowl victories and one national championship.
Saban delivered a video message in tribute when James died at age 80 in October 2013.
And the messages James imparted on Saban in word and deed in two seasons as his coach and two as his boss at Kent State — beginning with the message that got Saban into coaching in the first place — shape the methods Saban has employed ever since.
“He never doubted he would be a good coach,” said Carol James, Don James’ widow. “That’s why he picked him when he was just out of college. He could always see his potential.
“He knew that (Nick) studied the game. He knew the game plans, he studied the opposing team; it wasn’t just a kid who went out and played. He really studied every week who they were playing, and he practiced, executed, and did all those things you have to do to be a good player, but also to be a good coach.”
Saban regularly cites James’ beliefs in his explaining what he values in the Crimson Tide. Those beliefs had their roots in the football-rich region of northeast Ohio, where James was raised. But they stretch across the country. Even to Alabama.
James was a college assistant coach for 12 years, working under Florida State’s Bill Peterson, Michigan’s Fritz Crisler and Colorado’s Eddie Crowder. He counted all as influences. But his time and location in Tallahassee from 1959-65 gave him the opportunity to study Alabama coach Bear Bryant from a distance and up close.
“He went to coaching clinics that Bear Bryant had where he was a clinician, but he also went over and visited Bear Bryant at Alabama and picked his brain,” said Mike Lude, who worked with James for 20 years at Kent State and Washington.
“The idea of coaching from a tower for practice was a Bear Bryant influence. And the fact that he knew you win football games if you have better players than the other guy. You can't take bad players and coach them so well that you beat great players.”
Saban was not a great player in the NFL prospect sense of the term, but he was a great player in other ways and, as Lude said, “Tougher than heck.”
Saban’s competitiveness and inquisitiveness were part of the reason that when he suffered what essentially was a career-ending knee injury while playing safety against Northern Illinois on Oct. 28, 1972, James moved swiftly to make him a student coach.
But as Saban neared graduation the next spring, he was ready to move on.
“I never wanted to be a coach,” Saban said. “I wanted to be the general manager of a car dealership, because my dad had a service station and I grew up working on cars and all that kind of stuff.
“Don James calls me into his office one day and says, ‘I want you to be a G.A. next year.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be a G.A. I don’t want to go to graduate school. I’m sick of going to school.’
“And he said, ‘We have a new secondary coach. I’d like for you to go through spring practice because you know what we do on the back end and you could probably be helpful to the guy a little bit as he learns the system.’ ”
Saban talked to his wife Terry, who had a year of classes remaining at Kent State.
“We’d promised our parents that we’d both graduate, and she wanted to graduate and I wanted her to graduate. So that’s the only reason I did it. And I loved it, and it worked out really, really well.
“I think it was the last conversation I had with my dad, we played Louisville (the first game the next) year and I would always call him after the game and tell him how the game went, and I said, ‘You know Dad, I think this is what I really want to do, I really like this.’
“And he said, ‘That’s great, I’m glad for you.’ Then he died the next week.”
The next season Saban became a coordinator for the first time, coaching the Kent State freshman team’s defense while assistant coach Skip Hall ran the offense. “He took to it, obviously, like a fish in water,” Hall said. “I mean, you could kind of tell he was on our page.
“I think what he learned from the Don James system, just like I did, is that attention to detail, the hard work, the fundamental and sound coaching, which was Don James’ trademark. I think Nick picked that up at an early age, and I think he has built on that over the years.”
James brought Hall and two other assistants to Washington the next season, and James’ successor Denny Fitzgerald made Saban a full-time assistant coach for the first time, putting him in charge of Kent State’s linebackers. Fifteen years later Saban became a head coach for the first time, at Toledo.
Since then the people who knew Saban at Kent State have continued to see James’ touches in Saban’s coaching: Lude points to their aptitude for player evaluation. Hall points to their overt strength, their underrated warmth and the fact they have a plan and standard for everything. “The thing about Don James System that's so similar to the Nick Saban System is that everybody knows what to expect,” he said.
Carol James said, “There’s not a lot of hugging and kissing on the sideline. He’s business. And Don was like that, too. And I actually see a lot of Don and Nick in (Washington) Coach (Chris) Petersen, too, if you watch him.”
Pinkel points to their meticulous organization genius, their practice of coaching their assistant coaches, and the evaluations and feedback provided daily.
“A lot of football programs don't have the meticulous organization that he has, and he learned a lot from Coach James,” Pinkel said. “I know that Nick is as good as anybody who ever was in this business, to make sure the process that he has in place. He runs the program like everybody's got as good of players like he does.
“I've been trying to say this the last few years, he will go down as the greatest college football coach ever. He will, without question. Nobody's ever done what he's doing, but there's a reason why.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...0709313&PID=6146927&SID=ix9syzptbp001vmn00dth
Elvis Hines Jr@__EH2
