Since many of the visiting posters on this forum are Bama fans, I thought I would share one of my posts I made on the premium site back on August 4, 2015. Hopefully, you will appreciate it since mental toughness is a major part of Saban's "Process".

Developing mental toughness

KSU alum and current Alabama head coach Nick Saban defines mental toughness as follows:

"I think mental toughness is a perseverance that you have when you can make yourself do something that you really don't feel like doing. In other words, you don't really feel like getting up, but you get up. You don't feel like practicing today, but you practice. You don't feel like focusing today, but you focus. And, even in difficult circumstances and difficult surroundings, you can stay focused on what you need to stay focused on. So, it really is a mental discipline to be able to stick with in whatever circumstance you are in and continue to persevere at a high level and not let some other circumstance affect how you perform."

"But it's how you affect being a good competitor," he said. "You can't be a good competitor if you can't overcome adversity. You can't overcome adversity if you don't have mental toughness. So, it's the same as physical toughness except it's how you think, not how you physically do something."

In the same press conference that Saban was asked to define mental toughness, a question was asked for him to recall his most meaningful game when he was at Kent State and Saban singled out a game against Bowling Green.

"Bowling Green had a really good team, one of the better games we played as a team," Saban said. "We had to play at Bowling Green, and Don Nehlen was the coach there then, and they had a really good program. It was the year we won a championship, which we weren't really supposed to be all that good. We beat them up at Bowling Green, which doesn't sound like a big game relative to Alabama and Florida or Alabama and Georgia or Alabama and Auburn. But in the Mid-American Conference, that was a big game and a big win for us, and really put us in the position where we had a chance to win a championship, which we went on and did as a team."

Saban also vividly recalled the last game of his last regular season, even though he did not play because of an injury.

"We played Miami at Miami (Ohio), and Jack Lambert was the middle linebacker," Saban said of the Kent State star. "We got in kind of a seven dime and somewhat of the same goal-line defense we play now. And they had a guy named (Bob) Hitchens, who played in the NFL and was a tailback. They completed a pass down to the 1-yard line. And it was like, I don't know what the score was for sure, maybe 21-17 or something, and they needed a touchdown to win. They went four plays in a row where they wanted the lead. He tried to jump over and Lambert was a middle 'backer and he knocked him back every time. And they went for it on fourth down, and I sort of remember that game probably because that won the championship for us."

So if Kent State was not really supposed to be all that good the year the Flashes won the MAC championship, one can make the argument that KSU won it more on mental toughness than on pure talent.

But how do you develop mental toughness and can that be the determining factor in making the current team more competitive than last year's team?

Mental toughness is developed every day in practice and during weight training and conditioning throughout the year. Of course all teams practice and lift weights but the difference between average teams and championship teams is the ability to work through pain. Whether weight lifting or practicing in hot, humid conditions, you have to get to the point of pain because it doesn't do any good in developing mental toughness until you get to the point of pain. The whole idea in developing mental toughness is when you are in competition with someone else and you hit the pain barrier, you should welcome it because that means your opponent is experiencing pain and to the degree that you are better able to work right through the pain than they can enables you to defeat them.

In 1972, both Bowling Green and Miami might have been more talented than Kent State but the Flashes had more mental toughness which was the deciding factor in winning the conference championship.

The margin of defeat in Kent's six MAC setbacks last season was 10 points or less. The Golden Flashes were in position to tie or take the lead in all of those games in the fourth quarter.

"We know how close we were in a lot of games,'' senior defensive lineman Nate Terhune said at MAC Media Day last week. "This year, we have to finish."

With fall football camp beginning this week, how well the Flashes finish games this season may come down to the team's ability to work through pain during adversity. If last year's 27-24 season-ending victory over arch-rival Akron is any indication of the team's developing mental toughness, expect to see a more competitive team this year despite its last place MAC East finish in the Mid-American Conference football media poll.

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2011/08/video_nick_sabans_press_confer.html

Where you at, dogs? Pinn? Grad? Teddy? Others?

“If recruiting is the lifeblood of college coaching, then integrity is the core value of a character coach.” -- Coach Gary Waters



Since Coach Waters' book has yet to be published, I don't know what his ten principles of a character coach are, but I know he not only had an eye for talent, but also had an eye for character when he was a coach. The reason Kent State was an Elite 8 team in 2002 was because Coach Waters recruited and developed the players on the team. Sure, Stan Heath was the head coach of the 2001-2002 team, but Waters was really responsible for building the team into what it became.

I realize tattoos may not have been as popular in 2001-2002 as they are now, but I can't help notice that none of the players on the Elite Eight team had any tattoos, at least not that I recall.

Some people today may not see tattoos as a character flaw, and perhaps it's not one. However, I would like to point out that the best player in the MAC does not have any visible tattoos on his body. That player is Justin Turner of Bowling Green, a player Waters tried to recruit.

When Bowling Green had to score in the final seconds to secure a win against Ohio, I had no doubt who would shoot the ball. I also had no doubt who would win the game. With the ball in Turner's hands, the Falcons trusted Turner to make the final shot and he did not disappoint them. Trailing by as many as 18 points in the first half and by 15 at halftime, Bowling Green won the game this weekend, 62-61, to maintain its first place standing in the MAC East with Akron.



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If Kent State ever hopes to develop another Sweet 16 or Elite 8 team again, it will take high-character players like the ones Coach Waters recruited at Kent State or players like Justin Turner. Certainly talent is important, but character makes the difference. Unfortunately for Coach Senderoff, that's the lesson he still needs to learn.

https://www.coachwaters.com/

https://michiganpreps.rivals.com/news/2016-pg-justin-turner-patient-with-his-recruitment/

Woody Wommack caught up with Rivals250 DT Christen Miller to break down his finalists in advance of his announcement on Wednesday.


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From a poster on Flash Fanatics:

"Kent alum Nick Saban figured out a way to score 24 points on the best defense in the land (or so the talking heads say). Three 70+ yard drives. Impossible to predict how these games will go."

Impossible to predict how these games will go? I don't think so. Back on October 11, I posted the following on Facebook:

"CBS Sports makes CFP projections after Alabama loss and has No. 1 Georgia playing No. 4 Cincinnati and No. 2 Iowa playing No. 3 Oklahoma.

But because Alabama now has its back against the wall and has to defeat Georgia in the SEC Championship game to get into the college football playoff, the Tide will defeat the Bulldogs and go on to win the National Championship like it did back in 2012.

That year, LSU was selected to participate in the BCS National Championship game after a 13–0 regular season that culminated with a 42–10 win over the University of Georgia in the 2011 SEC Championship game. Alabama was picked as the other half of the match-up following an 11–1 campaign, with its only loss coming against LSU in overtime during the regular season. Over the following weeks, a series of upsets resulted in the Crimson Tide receiving a No. 2 ranking in the final BCS rankings to qualify for the championship game. The selection of Alabama was controversial, and decried by writers and by fans who claimed other opponents, most prominently the Oklahoma State Cowboys (who finished second in most of the computer rankings), were more deserving of a spot in the game.

The 2012 Allstate BCS National Championship game was between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the LSU Tigers at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. Alabama beat LSU 21–0 to win its 14th national championship.

History has shown when Alabama is in a must win game, the Tide plays its very best. So expect to see Alabama defeat Georgia in the SEC Championship game and again in the National Championship game.

Roll Tide!!!"