Getty ImagesCoach Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide football team. University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban is one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. Under his guidance, Alabama won three BCS championships in 2009, 2011, and 2012 and took the SEC title last year. A crucial element of Saban’s edge is what he calls the “Process,” a simple but profound way of breaking down a difficult situation into manageable pieces. Saban owes this philosophy to Dr. Lionel “Lonny” Rosen, a Michigan State University psychiatry professor he befriended when he coached there in the late ’90s, writes Monte Burke in his book “Saban: The Making of a Coach.” Saban had long been interested in psychology and wanted to incorporate an understanding of how the mind works into his coaching style. Rosen started showing up to practices and became known to players as “the wizard dude” and “Lonny Graybeard,” since, as Burke puts it, “he looks like someone who has just wandered back into civilization after seven months on the Appalachian Trail.” The Process was born in early November 1998, leading up to a big game against the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes. The team wasn’t feeling confident, and Saban turned to Rosen for guidance. Rosen taught the Michigan State Spartans a form of step-by-step thinking developed by cognitive therapy pioneer Aaron Beck and popularly used in the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program. “Rosen emphasized that the average play in the football game lasted about seven seconds,” Burke writes. “The players would concentrate only on winning those seconds, take a rest between plays, then do it all over again. There would be no focus at all on the scoreboard or on the end results.” The game against Ohio State started off terribly. …
Continue Reading: How Alabama coach Nick Saban used psychology to build a football dynasty
