Saban Tries to Stay Focused

It might seem tough to remain low-key when you’re dressed in a tuxedo, sitting in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and sitting near the top of the college football world.

But Louisiana State Coach Nick Saban likes things boring and simple, and the events of the last few days are not about to change that.

Just days after his Tigers won their way into the bowl championship series title game at the Sugar Bowl, Saban was in New York to watch one of his players receive an award. He took a few moments to reflect on the season.

There was no broad smile. No grand gestures. His voice remained close to a monotone.

“Really, I am excited,” he said. “I just don’t want to get caught up in any of the riff-raff that surrounds this game.”

Composure was a key to LSU’s success this season, a quality that dates to early October, just after the Tigers defeated Georgia.

Saban suspected his players had grown overconfident and were not taking their next opponent, struggling Florida, seriously enough. He tried to warn them but they lost, 19-7.

“That really helped the rest of our season,” he said. “They were willing to buy into this idea of playing one game at a time.”

The coach told his players they were still in the hunt, that one if not both of the teams that ended up in the Sugar Bowl would probably have a loss. Then, as the Tigers put together a string of wins, he gave them another speech.

“There were three weeks left in the season,” he recalled. “I told them, ‘Look, guys, let’s talk about this now. Bowl games, BCS, where we’re ranked. Let’s talk now because this is the last time we’re going to talk about it.’ ”

By then, however, the veteran players had adopted their coach’s reserved demeanor.

“The new emphasis on who’s going to get into the championship game

The day after winning the SEC title game, the Tigers gathered for a meeting. Near the end, someone whispered to Saban that they were in the Sugar Bowl. He told the team and they celebrated -- in a Saban sort of way.

“They kind of stood up. A couple of high-fives,” he said. “If I had told them we were going to the Rose Bowl to play Michigan, they’d have been happy too.”

Between recruiting and going to awards dinners, Saban said he hasn’t had time to look at tapes of Oklahoma. That will begin when the team reconvenes for practice next week.

“We were never affected by all this stuff before, so it’s not much of a change for us now,” he said. “As boring and as simple as it sounds, you have to focus on playing well in this game.”