Sending emails and opening bills: Inside Nick Saban’s ‘new reality’
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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The stress level of former Alabama football coach Nick Saban is down exponentially these days, though there are some harrowing moments.
Like when his 3-year-old grandson, James, joins him on the golf course.
“The challenge is keeping him out of the sand traps,” Saban said. “He likes to play in the sand. That’s about the most stress I’ve had.”
The legendary coach’s meticulous attention to detail and unmatched work ethic during his 17 seasons in Tuscaloosa produced six national championships (after he won one at LSU), 123 NFL draft picks — including 44 first-rounders — and a new standard in college football.
But it left little time for anything else. Remember, Saban once reportedly complained about the national title game costing him a week of recruiting time.
So how has Saban adapted to his new life? It’s something his closest confidants, family members and Saban himself are still coming to grips with.
“When you’re in a rat race like he’s been, you could never really step away and appreciate what you’ve accomplished,” said Alabama head athletic trainer Jeff Allen, the only football staff member Saban brought to the Tide who was there for his entire tenure.
“You just never could because in this business as soon as you take a breath, you’re getting beat. He wasn’t going to take a breath.”
Not only is Saban now taking a breath, he’s seeing the world outside of football. He’s experiencing things he never had time for in the past. He’s actually relaxing, a word that previously wasn’t really part of his vocabulary.
“The biggest change for me as a person is that I lived my whole life for the last 50 years being in a hurry,” Saban told ESPN. “It was, ‘Hurry up to go here. Hurry up to go there. Don’t be late for this meeting. You’ve got another meeting in an hour. What are you going to say to the staff? What are you going to say to the team?’
“I mean, it was just deadline after deadline after deadline. Even when I was driving to the lake to go on vacation, I’d be in a hurry, and for what? But that’s just how you were built.”
‘The Ten Commandments of Retirement’
THERE WAS NEVER any debate about who was in charge of Alabama’s football program, but Saban has often joked that his wife of 52 years, Terry, was the family member most proficient at giving orders.
The day after he retired in January, Saban said he had a note from Ms. Terry, as he refers to her, sitting on his chair. It spelled out “The Ten Commandments of Retirement.”
Terry wouldn’t share all of them, but near the top was the decree that Saban wait for her to sit down at the dinner table and to slow down when eating. She also told him it was polite to leave a little something on his plate when eating at a restaurant.
“So at our first dinner at home, he brought his plate to me with half a pickle on it and said, ‘To be polite!'” Terry said.
Another commandment calls for Saban to alter his behavior when they are settling in on the couch. For years, when Terry would get a blanket for herself, she always picked one up for Saban.
“Now, I’d appreciate the same courtesy,” she wrote.
Terry has enrolled Saban into her own version of a “Tech 101” class.
“He’s actually texting and reading his own emails and sent his first-ever email,” Terry said. “He even took his first trip to the pharmacy to pick up his first prescription. He’s actually quite proud of himself.”
To be clear, Saban has hardly become a homebody. He doesn’t hang out watching television, though he admits to being a big fan of “Game of Thrones.”
“I can’t stand sitting around now any more than I could stand it when I was coaching,” Saban said. “I want to stay busy. I think everybody looks at me like, ‘This guy’s a ball coach and that’s all he does.’ I’ve got businesses, I do speaking stuff. I’ve got my TV job now with ESPN. I like to play golf. I’ve got tons of stuff to do. So I’m not retiring to quit working.”
Saban is part-owner of multiple car dealerships, including a Ferrari dealership in Nashville and a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Birmingham. He has a stake in a boutique hotel, The Alamite, in downtown Tuscaloosa.
“What’s so exciting for all of us, especially him, is that he kind of has a blank slate now that he can play around with,” said Saban’s daughter Kristen, who lives in Birmingham. “It’s really nice to see him not have this big stressful thing hanging over him. He’s accomplished so much that I don’t think he feels like he’s leaving anything behind. He’s leaving with no regrets and stepping away with a lot of gratitude and a lot of relief at the same time.
“He’s in a relaxed state of mind that I haven’t really seen him in, and it kind of puts everybody else at peace too.”
Now that Saban is home more, he has been doing the kind of mundane household tasks most don’t even think about but that weren’t part of his routine. Imagine being the delivery driver who finds himself face-to-face with college football’s greatest coach.
“It’s funny to see people’s reaction when he opens the door because for 17 years he has never been there to answer it,” said Terry, who has had as much fun as anybody reveling in the changes in her husband’s lifestyle.
She joked that Saban has now learned where all the light switches are in the house and has taken to getting the mail. He even opens up some of the bills now.
“Sometimes ignorance is bliss,” Terry said.
Kristen is confident her dad will continue to evolve and adapt in retirement, much as he did when he was coaching. But don’t expect him to show up on social media.
“No chance,” Kristen said, laughing. “People have said they want him on it, and I’ve said it’s just not going to happen. He just learned to text and email. How’s he going to tweet something?”
Kristen promises to post a few pictures of the retirement version of her dad from time to time on her social media accounts.
“But could you imagine him doing an Instagram selfie or something somewhere on the golf course?” she said. “We can hope, but it’s not going to happen.”
And don’t expect Saban to make many grocery store runs, as Kristen and Terry learned their lesson a few years ago when the family was at their old home in Boca Grande, Florida. They sent Saban to the store to restock the fridge with ketchup, mustard and other condiments, and to fill the car with gas. But the perfectionist in Saban quickly became a problem.
“He was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I can do it,’ and he’s not even in the store for five minutes when he calls and says, ‘There’s a hundred bottles of ketchup and mustard on the shelf. Which kind am I supposed to get?'” Kristen recounted.
Saban was persistent: “Is there a specific brand or size?”
Kristen, who laughs as hard now as she did when the grocery store excursion occurred, said the general response from her and her mom was the same.
“God forbid he grabs the wrong bottle,” she said. “We were like, ‘OK, just grab whatever.'”
A windowless office and lunchtime golf
THE SABANS HAVE a new home in Jupiter Island, Florida, not far from where Tiger Woods lives. They’ve been there for most of March, and though they will spend plenty of time there in the offseason, they will remain based in Tuscaloosa. Saban wants to be close enough where he can be a resource for the university and will also have more time to join Terry in her philanthropic work.
“I want to bring the least amount of attention to me being around here as possible,” Saban said. “So I want to be supportive. I want to be helpful, but I don’t want to be looking over anybody’s shoulder.”
In other words, don’t expect him to be walking around the hallways at the football complex and poking his head in meetings. He’s talked multiple times with new coach Kalen DeBoer and even had a conversation with new defensive coordinator Kane Wommack, but Saban will steer clear of the day-to-day football operation.
He will keep an office on campus, but not in the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility where it had been for the past 17 years. His new office is located above the south end zone of Bryant-Denny Stadium, the opposite side from the Walk of Champions and Saban’s statue, so he won’t have to walk past the 9-foot bronze likeness of himself. His office is modest in size with no windows, and his desk is the same one he had at the football complex.
“It’s just a hell of a lot cleaner,” Saban said.
When he’s heading to the office, Saban leaves the house about the same time he always did, just before 7 a.m. Depending on what he has going on, he may head home around 4 p.m., or he may leave at lunchtime and go hit golf balls. He’s not naïve and knows there will be some football withdrawal as he settles into retirement life.
When Saban was nearing a decision about whether to retire, he spoke with Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells, who has a house in the same area of Jupiter Island. Parcells is in the thoroughbred racing business and cautioned Saban not to fall into the same trap as some of the jockeys he’s seen who keep riding into and beyond their 50s because it’s in their blood and they just can’t give it up.
“It’s a hazardous occupation, and I’m talking about screws just holding those guys’ chests together, and they’re still taking every mount they can get. There’s no way they’re ever going to quit,” Saban said, relaying his conversation with Parcells. “Coaches are like that, too, because as a coach, you think you’ve got to keep coaching, you’ve got to keep teaching, that you can’t do without it.
“But Parcells’ analogy was a good one for me, because you step back and realize that you can.”
Mark Dantonio, who was Saban’s defensive backs coach at Michigan State in the 1990s and was later the Spartans’ head coach for 13 seasons, remembers getting a call from his old boss about two or three days after Dantonio retired in 2019.
“He called just checking on how I was doing, and then two days after that call, he called me back again to check on me,” recalled Dantonio, who is part of the College Football Hall of Fame Class of 2024. “When you retire in this business, you’re jumping off a fast car. There’s no landing place. You go from working 365 days, 24 hours a day, to being retired. There’s going to be other things that replace that, but nothing like you’re used to. So there’s quite an adjustment.”
Football will always be a part of Saban’s DNA, whether he’s lending his voice in an attempt to help ease the current chaos in the sport, as he did earlier this month when appearing before a congressional committee in Washington, D.C., or breaking down a matchup on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” which he will be a part of this season. Saban has been working overtime watching tape and researching players — many of whom he coached, coached against or recruited — in preparation for ESPN’s NFL draft coverage.
His desk is surrounded by a stack of boxes filled with notes going back more than 20 years. He’s in the process of consolidating his notes from some of the talks he had with coaches and players.
“It’s taken forever because they’re not in order,” Saban said. “I was looking at a talk today, for instance, when I was with the Dolphins before we played the Oakland Raiders. I want to be able to remember what I said to the players, the points I was trying to make, some of the things you want to get across when you’re talking to some of these groups about leadership.”
Joe Pendry was one of Saban’s most trusted confidants in football, and they go all the way back to their West Virginia roots. Pendry, who was Saban’s first offensive line coach at Alabama, offered his longtime pal a very simple piece of advice.
“‘Turn that phone off and leave it off,'” Pendry said he told Saban. “It’s never easy when you’ve done it as long and as well as Nick has and then walk away and not undergo a little bit of a debriefing process. He’ll get there. It just might take him some time, especially on those dates like preseason camp starting and the season starting. As much as anything, he’s going to miss practice because nobody loved being out there coaching and teaching those players more than Nick did.”
Enjoying a ‘new reality’
Saban promised Terry he would walk away from football while their quality of life would still allow them to do things they’ve wanted to but couldn’t because of his schedule. That may mean more trips to their home in Lake Burton, Georgia, where they have a group of friends who don’t bombard him with football talk. Saban has celebrated his birthday (he turns 73 this year) the past few years with those friends. And since his birthday falls on Halloween, usually during an open date on Alabama’s schedule, they don’t gather to watch football, but occasionally dress up in costumes.
Last October, Saban dressed up as explorer John Smith from “Pocahontas.” Other costumes included Thurston Howell III and Lovey from the old television show “Gilligan’s Island.”
“We all are enjoying this new reality of more time, more choices and less stress,” Terry said.
And more time to play golf.
Last month Saban played at a celebrity tournament in Florida with rappers 50 Cent and Travis Scott. When Kristen caught wind of that, she couldn’t resist needling her dad.
“I said, ‘Do you understand who you’re playing golf with right now?'” she asked. “He goes, ‘Yeah, they’re rappers.’ I told him they’re not just rappers, that 50 Cent was the biggest rapper of my generation and Travis Scott is one of the biggest of the current generation. I was like, ‘You have no idea the people you’re in the presence of,’ and he really didn’t.
“He could meet the Dalai Lama and not realize who it was.”
On a typical workday, Saban ate lunch at his desk, the same salad, with turkey slices and cherry tomatoes, day after day. His new office on campus is just steps away from Rama Jama’s, an iconic area restaurant that is a virtual football museum filled with helmets, jerseys and other memorabilia. On the day Saban moved into his new digs, Allen pointed to Rama Jama’s and said, “Coach, now you can walk across the street and get you a hamburger for lunch.”
Saban looked quizzically at the restaurant and said, “Yeah, what is that place? Has it been there for a long time?”
Allen, who had a front-row seat for Saban’s singular focus for 17 seasons, could only laugh.
“Yeah, Coach, for decades,” he responded.
Saban nodded and said that he might try it sometime.
“I just want to be there when he walks in and orders a hamburger,” Allen said with a laugh.
So does Kristen.
“We all do,” she said. “Seeing him sitting there and eating a hamburger in the middle of the day might be the surest sign yet that he’s really retired, and he deserves every bit of it.”
Saban smiled when asked how long it took for a sense of relief to set in after telling his players he was retiring.
“Really as soon as I did it,” he said. “Now, I had to adapt. People would call me and ask me questions. Players would call and ask what they should do, and I would commiserate on it and tell Terry that so-and-so is calling about this or that or whatever.”
Terry’s response was always the same: “It’s not your problem anymore.”
“I had to get used to that part of it,” Saban said.
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Ryan S. Clark, NHL reporter
DENVER — Growing up in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, meant Casey Mittelstadt spent countless hours watching Minnesota Wild games and wearing the No. 11 jersey of his favorite player whenever he played pond hockey as a child.
Being a kid from Robbinsville, New Jersey, who grew up watching the New Jersey Devils gave Ross Colton a sense of pride knowing he could someday get to the NHL by studying the traits of a certain hard-working, two-way winger who was his idol.
One of Jason Robertson’s biggest entry points into hockey was playing the EA Sports NHL video game. He was 7 and didn’t know much about the league, but playing those games allowed him to go through teams. He saw the Devils, he liked the logo and red was his favorite color, so it all fit together. It also made him a fan of a forward who would become a six-time 30-goal scorer.
Each of these anecdotes underscores how much Zach Parise means to hockey in America.
These are among the reasons why many of his Colorado Avalanche teammates want him to rethink his retirement plans and stay around for at least one more year.
“I really hope he doesn’t hang them up,” said Avalanche forward Brandon Duhaime, who grew up in South Florida watching Parise play. “I was just telling him yesterday that he’s coming into his prime here. He’s been really fun to watch and what he contributes to the lineup is super important.”
Parise has repeatedly said this will be his final season. After not signing with a team as a free agent at the start of the season, he joined the Avs on a one-year contract on Jan. 26, with the hopes he could win the Stanley Cup that has eluded him throughout a 19-year career in which he has scored 434 goals and 889 points in 1,254 regular-season games.
That’s what could make Wednesday one of the more emotional nights in Parise’s distinguished career. With the Dallas Stars holding a 3-1 lead in their Western Conference semifinal series, the Avs’ next loss could be the final game of Parise’s career.
And if this is really it for Parise? His career, while it might not have a Stanley Cup, will be filled with moments that have made him one of the most important figures in American hockey over the past two decades.
The 39-year-old was one of the faces of the generation of players, including Patrick Kane, Phil Kessel, Jack Johnson, Jonathan Quick and Ryan Suter, who provided a blueprint for how Americans could find success at the highest levels of the game.
That’s what made winning America’s first IIHF World Junior Championship back in 2004 beyond special. It’s what made the U.S. reaching the gold medal game and pushing Canada to the brink in overtime at the 2010 Winter Olympics impactful. Those moments allowed a new generation of American players to understand they could compete with the best in the world at international tournaments and in the NHL.
Players, regardless of age, go out of their way to talk about how Parise carries himself the “right way” on and off the ice.
“I haven’t really thought about it all, to be honest,” Parise said when asked about his legacy. “I think you just get so consumed in just playing and having fun with it. I’ve been fortunate to wind up on some good teams, being on the first [U.S.] under-18 team to win the gold, the first [U.S.] World Junior team to win the gold. I look at those two teams that were pretty important for USA Hockey, but I never looked at it from an individual standpoint.”
As players slowly left Ball Arena after an optional practice, the double doors from the Avalanche’s dressing room opened and walked Parise out.
He’s less than two months away from turning 40 but looks like he might be in his early 30s. Dressed in a prep school white ball cap, a dark T-shirt, a black jacket and blue jeans, he sported a look that makes him one of the Avalanche’s more stylish players.
Parise grabbed a seat and for the next 19 minutes, he answered questions while also learning just how much he still means to so many American youth hockey players.
His eyes widened upon hearing how he was Mittelstadt’s childhood hero and that his current teammate wore his sweater as a kid. He learned how, when Mittelstadt and his buddies were kids, they ran around screaming throughout a Minnesota cabin on the day Parise signed with the Wild.
That’s when he also learned Mittelstadt had held off on telling him this because he wanted to play it cool.
In a way that’s uniquely Parise. He showed his appreciation while expressing a level of humility that’s typically more reserved for a rookie rather than a 19-year veteran who has been the face of two franchises.
What allows Parise to be that way, when he could bask in the fact that he has been such a crucial part of so many lives?
“I think I was raised that way by my parents,” Parise said. “I grew up in that environment at Shattuck [the Minnesota prep school known for its hockey program]. That was just the culture that is there. It’s all about the team and not the individual, but hearing that, it means that you did the right things.”
Setting an example was always something Parise thought about with deep regard. It has become an even greater priority now that he’s a father. That’s why talking about his own father causes him to get choked up.
Of all the lessons Jean-Paul Joseph-Louis Parise taught his children, the most important was to be the best person they could be. That meant making time for others, being polite and realizing that being nice to someone never hurt anyone.
How much do those lessons mean now, with Parise at the end of his career, nine years after his father passed away?
“We all want to follow in our dad’s footsteps,” Parise said, his voice breaking. “The way I hear about how people talk about him, you want people to talk about you the way they refer to him. Since he’s passed, I’ve had so many people in Long Island or that I don’t even know who have pulled me aside in rinks after morning skates and just say, ‘I played for your dad’ and what he meant to them and the impact he left on them.
“When it’s all said and done and you’re done playing this sport, you want to leave a good impression. It goes back to wanting to be like your dad.”
J.P. Parise played for Canada in the famed 1972 Summit Series. With his father representing Canada, was there ever a thought for Parise to play for Canada? Or was it just understood he was going to play for the U.S.?
“I was born here, my dad had become a U.S. citizen and I guess it never really crossed my mind that was an option,” Parise said. “It was like, ‘Here’s the path.’ When you’re 15 and going to selects and you’re playing for the under-16s or whatever it was. I’m not even sure that was even a thought.”
Representing the U.S. at such an early age allowed Parise to get in on the ground floor of the next wave of American hockey. It’s not that Team USA didn’t have talented players throughout various levels. It did. But winning international tournaments proved challenging.
The U.S. men’s team has won only two IIHF World Championships, with the most recent coming in 1960. While the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s team won the gold medal, the nation didn’t return to the podium until 2002, when it won silver. America’s next podium appearance at the Olympics came in 2010.
Capturing the first gold medal in American history at the U-18 World Juniors in 2002, then winning the nation’s first goal medal at the 2004 World Juniors built more momentum. Six years later, the U.S. fielded a team at the 2010 Olympics that placed the world on notice that a shift could be coming.
Now it appears that shift has arrived. Although it is early, Team USA is one of the favorites to win both the 4 Nations Face Off in 2025 and the Winter Olympics in 2026.
“You look back, and I know USA Hockey has had a lot of success since then, but you take pride in, ‘Hey, we were the first ones,'” Parise explained. “We had an impact on what they’re doing now and how they’re winning all this stuff now. You feel like we broke through and were able to set a good example for these guys.”
It was Valentine’s Day when Colton’s cell phone blew up. He wasn’t getting heart emojis from friends.
What he got that day were several texts from his friends about the fact that he was now going to play with Parise.
“When he first got here, I just wanted to feel him out. I think he knew I was a big fan of his,” Colton said with a smile. “But once we started to play cards together on the plane or started going to dinners with him, I definitely asked him some stuff about my childhood and his years in Jersey. He’s been amazing. He doesn’t get annoyed. It’s really cool to see, but that goes to show the kind of person he is to make someone’s day.”
Culture is one of those words front offices throw around when it comes to building the sort of program that can win championships. The Avalanche have a particular culture that helped them win their third Stanley Cup in 2022, and there’s a belief they could win more in the years ahead.
Even with those core tenets in place, there’s still flexibility to incorporate more, which is what makes Parise even more valuable.
“The one thing I always love about him is that he’s one of the first guys on the ice and one of the last guys off,” Colton said. “He’s doing little stuff after practice. He’s shooting pucks. He’ll ask you, ‘Do you want me to pass you some pucks?’ Coming from a guy like that, it should be the other way around. He’s the first guy who wants to help you with your game.”
Whether it’s his current set of teammates or those who have played against him, nearly everyone has something to say about Parise and his impact on the game.
“When I first got to New Jersey, the staff there, all they talked about was Zach,” said Avs forward Miles Wood, who started his career with the Devils. “I didn’t have the privilege to play with him there, but what he did to the organization over his time there, he was such an impactful player.”
Duhaime, who was traded to the Avs from the Wild at the deadline, was a prospect when Parise played in Minnesota.
“I did one or two camps with him and he was always super nice,” Duhaime said. “I was an American League guy and always on the outside looking in. He was there and he was nothing but great to those young guys.”
The relationship between Johnson and Parise has existed for years. Johnson was a freshman at Shattuck when Parise was a senior. They represented Team USA together over the years, and were reunited this season when Parise joined the Avs in January.
“I think every great American player has had an impact because those are the guys that kids watch,” Johnson said. “When I was a kid, I watched Brian Leetch and Chris Chelios. Each generation watches the previous great players of that generation, and he’s one of them. I know he had an impact on me. He was a guy I looked up to.”
Winnipeg Jets forward Kyle Connor shared his thoughts on Parise during his team’s first-round series against the Avalanche.
“He’s a big part of a lot of the Olympics and Team USA,” Connor said. “I think the type of motor and type of player — while I’ve never met him personally — from what I see, he gives it his all every single shift. … That whole team and USA Hockey throughout the years and the success they had, it really helped grow the game in the States as well.”
Another one of his contemporaries, Stars center Joe Pavelski, provided a different perspective.
“He’s been a player who leaves an impact,” Pavelski said. “I’ve gotten to play with him a few times for Team USA and have been around him a little bit. It was great to be able to do that and see what he’s about as a player and as a person. I have a lot of respect for Zach.”
From practices to morning skates to warmups to games, there is an expectation for anyone who wears an Avalanche sweater.
They better be prepared to skate all the time, or they can go play somewhere else.
Parise has done that. He has done it repeatedly since coming to Denver. It’s why he has been on the Avs’ second line and continues to be trusted in key scenarios. Add in the fact that he’ll turn 40 in two months, and you start to see why his teammates want him to stay.
“Any superstar that you see in those older years, they just manage the game the right way,” Duhaime said. “They think the game better than anyone else. Let’s say they physically lose a step or lose a little bit of speed, they make up for with their mind. Not saying that Zach’s lost a step, because he looks faster than ever.”
Parise admitted he has had moments when he stops to appreciate what he’s doing at this stage of his career. One of those came when he opened the playoffs on the first line with Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen.
“I thought, this is incredible!” Parise said. “I am playing on the top line with the Colorado Avalanche … something I never thought would happen. To hear teammates talk like that, it means a lot.”
Realizing he can still perform at this level, has Parise thought about reconsidering his decision to retire?
“I mean, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t times,” Parise said. “It’s just the excitement of winning a playoff round or it never changes with that excitement when you score a goal. You think, ‘I can still do it. I kinda want to keep doing it.’ But I feel like I’m at the point that now just mentally going through another 82 games would be really hard.”
But?
“Never say never,” Parise smiled. “Right now, I think that’s kind of the direction I’m thinking.”
Parise laughed when he was asked whether he’s at peace with that decision, because it seems like he could be swayed.
“I thought I was at peace with it last year!” Parise said. “It was also different, coming off what I thought was a good year. I felt great. It’s also been hard being away from the family. That’s tough being away from the kids. But to put a percentage on it, you’re talking upper 90s.”
Parise spoke with ESPN the day before the Avalanche lost Game 4. He said if the Avs won the Stanley Cup this season, he wouldn’t even consider coming back.
But if this season ends with a loss in the second round, the conference finals or the Cup finals, does he know for certain that he’ll be done?
“I think this is it,” Parise said. “I’m very content with it.”
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