Everything Alabama football coach Nick Saban said at SEC Media Days 2023

Alabama coach Nick Saban, the longest-tenured coach in the SEC, opened Day 3 of SEC Media Days on Wednesday.

Saban is entering his 17th season after leading the Crimson Tide to a 11-2 finish in 2022. Equipped with a new offensive coordinator (Tommy Rees), defensive coordinator (Kevin Steele) and a quarterback room without a clear starter, Saban looks ahead to a 2023 campaign with questions on how his team will fare in the conference.

Here's everything Saban said:

Nick Saban at SEC Media Days in Nashville:

Question: You now have the record for one coach at a single institution in SEC Media Day's history. When you think about your tenure at Alabama, what are you most proud of and what is the recipe for future success while avoiding complacency?

"Well, the thing that I would be most proud of is the fact that we have a program that has helped players have a chance to be more successful in life because they were involved in a program. That's the No. 1 thing, because that's the No. 1 goal, right, that we have in our program and that I personally have for the players in our program. We are going to continue to do that.

To answer the second part of your question is, every season is a new challenge. It's like you took a new job. You have returning players that need to develop new roles on the team, whether it's leadership or play a new position. And you have a lot of young players who are coming in that you need to develop to help them be able to play at a certain level so that you can accomplish some of the goals and aspirations that the team has for themselves in terms of what they want to accomplish, individually and collectively.

And I never look back at the past. It's always about the future. Most of the things that I remember about the past are the games we didn't win, the National Championship games that we lost, the games that we lost a year ago on the last play of the game, and how that impacted our chances to have a successful season and accomplish the goals that the players wanted to accomplish and how we could have impacted that in a more positive way.

So I'm always looking for a better way, and always looking at what can we do to be better and that's what we continue to try to focus on in the future and that's a challenge that we have with every team and this team will be no different."

Question: You've of course replaced coordinators before. What are the particular processes and challenges that go into giving these players and coaches to mesh in time for this season?

"I think the most important thing is probably relationships. When you're a coordinator, you're in a leadership position for the players on that side of the ball. So to have good relationships in terms of how you present, how you motivate, and the players trusting and respecting in the things that you're trying to implement in the things that we do; that they trust and believe that that's going to help them be successful, so that's No. 1.

No. 2, we have tried to mitigate the changes that a new coordinator would create for players by trying to keep the same system, and that's a little challenging, sometimes when you have new coaches because they have to learn a certain amount to be able to implement the system so it doesn't change completely for the players.

But I'm really pleased with the two new coordinators that we have. Kevin Steele obviously has been with us before, so he understands the program and the expectation.

Tommy Rees is one of the brightest young guys that I've seen in a long time in this business and he's been a great addition and brought a lot of positives to the offensive side of the ball in terms of his ideas and how he relates to players, how he presents to players, his energy and enthusiasm on the field has been contagious. I think I see a great trust in our players with Tommy and what he tries to do from a leadership standpoint on offense."

ON GRANDMA SABAN AND QUARTERBACKS: Nick Saban compares Alabama quarterback uncertainty to his grandmother baking a cake

PRESEASON TALK: Here's what Alabama football's JC Latham finds 'disrespectful'

Question: You've been adamant about player accountability as it pertains to their actions both on and off the field. You've had a high-profile suspension in Tony Mitchell, and it appears he's been able to earn reinstatement. Can you talk about what players can do to regain the trust of the staff after these incidents off the field?

"I think there's probably some occasion where most of us in this room, including myself, did something in our life that probably wasn't a great choice and a great decision. And we always want to try to create a path for players who have made a mistake to get a second chance, but also to help educate them on what they can learn from the poor decision or judgment that they actually made. And hopefully, those things don't affect other people. I think it's much more serious when those things affect other people.

And so hopefully the penalties and the time missed and the education received are all going to be beneficial to the learning experience of this young man so that he has an opportunity to get an education, become a better person that has a better chance to be successful in life and also can contribute to the team.

So there's a process that we try to go through when we can give players a second chance. If players continue to make mistakes over and over and over and over and don't seem to learn and make progress, they will lose the respect of their teammates. And I think that when that occurs, then maybe it would be better if a guy was not involved in the program and would take the opportunity someplace else. But that hasn't happened with Tony Mitchell."

Question: I wanted to ask what is your relationship with Hugh Freeze, especially now that he's on the other side of the Iron Bowl from you?

"Well, I've always had a tremendous amount of respect for Hugh Freeze. He's a good friend. I thought he did a great job when he was at Ole Miss. He obviously did a really good job at Liberty, and I'm sure he'll do a very good job at Auburn.

So I have a tremendous amount of respect for him as a coach, and I think his history as a coach sort of speaks for itself. He's a good recruiter. They had really good players at Ole Miss when he was there, and I'm sure they will do the same thing in his current position.

So look, I'm friends with a lot of guys. There's a lot of guys out there that work for me and did a great job, but that doesn't mean that you can't respect them but you do have to compete against them and that's part of it. When I play golf, I play with some of my best friends, but they want to beat me and I want to beat them and that's okay.

But when the game is over, you're still friends and that's the way it will be probably with this. It's a great rivalry, the iron Bowl, and being successful in that game usually happens some significant impact on the SEC and the West Division.

So it's a game that's really, really important to us to try to continue to be able to do the things that we need to do to be able to have success, and when we play down there, it's always been challenging."

Question: You talk about losing players to the draft, having young teams. How much can that transfer portal be of assistance, especially as we hear across all levels of college sports allegations of tampering and things like that? So what's your take on the portal and how helpful can it be to get some experience when you've got a young team thanks to the players you're losing to the draft?

"All right, well, we've continued to try to build our team through recruiting quality high school talent and we use the portal sort of as you would use free agency in the NFL.

When we feel like we have a need at a position, we look and see if anybody is available in the portal that would help us at that particular position, and I think this year, we brought five guys in from the portal to complement. I think we had like 28 freshmen maybe to go with that.

But I do agree with you that having experienced players, if they are the right kind of guys and they are the right kind of people, and they understand the culture of what you're trying to accomplish can be very beneficial to your team.

But I think those players need to play if they are in the transfer portal and we should there for need them to play. There should be some need at their position so they have an opportunity to be able to contribute, and I think that's the case in most positions where we took guys this year out of the portal. Jahmyr Gibbs was a great example of a guy out of the portal who made a significant contribution to our team a year ago.

But the team has to be willing to embrace those players, which our team has always done a really good job of, and they have done the same this year."

Question: Do you have any specific impressions from your last encounter with Texas and could you evaluate their readiness to play in this league?

"Well, I can't evaluate their readiness to play in any game. I don't coach their team. I think Steve Sarkisian is a great coach and he'll have them ready.

But I think Texas has a lot of players back from last year's team. Obviously it was a really close, tough game last year when we played that game. I think they are doing an outstanding job of recruiting and developing the players on their team and it's going to be a real challenging game, no doubt, because they have a lot of starters back and they have a lot of experience coming back and an experienced quarterback.

So we expect them to have an outstanding team."

Question: You've got a player on the roster from Finland, and you've just recruited the No. 1 player in Germany. As the game grows outside of the U.S., how necessary and how realistic is it that your recruitment expands with that?

"Well, I think things are obviously a little more global maybe than they have ever been. I think football is creating a little more of an international brand in terms of where they are playing, who is playing, how they are playing.

So we had the opportunity with both -- our punter is also from Australia. But we have had the opportunity to get to know these young men that we recruited from Europe, really, because they came and spent a significant amount of time with us, whether it was in camp or visiting or whatever, so that we could determine, do they have the right stuff to be able to compete at this level. It was pretty easy to see they had the talent to do it. But could they understand that this is a little more competitive, the quality of ball was going to be a little bit different, and how are you going to respond to that.

We were excited, and with the players that we have that are international players on our team right now, and the ones that we have recruited in the past, they have all made a significant contribution. You know, Jessie Williams was one of the first from Australia, and defensive lineman who was an outstanding player who played for the Seahawks for four or five years.

We feel like these guys that we have recruited, Olaus is on our team now and developing nicely, and we had the young man from Germany in our camp this summer, and was very impressed with him.

So good additions to our team. Glad to have the opportunity."

Question: First, favorite cake. Want to know your favorite cake since you mentioned that in your opening statement. But I would like to you speak to your quarterback room and your expectations to that this fall.

"Yeah, well, carrot cake, that's easy.

Look, I talked about expectations before and we are focusing on how do they develop the players that we have, and we want to develop all the players. You know, everybody wants to know who the starter is. What about the backup guy who has to go in and play, like Jalen Milroe did last year against Texas A&M, Howie finished the Arkansas game. It's important that all these guys continue to develop, and everybody at that position develops into where they can play winning football.

I use the cake analogy because it's not done yet. It's not -- there's not a decision that needs to be made at this point in time, nor are we ready to make that decision at this time until somebody separates themselves.

But expectations, we want somebody to play winning football at that position. Our quarterback is a unique position in that you distribute the ball on every play, whether you hand it off, whether you choose the play that we run, whether you hand it off or whether you throw an advantaged throw, making decisions in the passing game to throw it to the right guys at the right time and the right place and accurately.

So who can do that with the most consistency and be a leader on our team who has an impact on the other players is also important, because quarterback may be one of the most difficult positions to play if the people around you don't play well.

So I think that's a challenge for us, too, is to get the people around our quarterbacks to play well so that it's a little easier for them to be able to have success at the position when they get the opportunity."

Question: I know it's one year away, but what impact do you think bringing Texas and Oklahoma is going to mean to the SEC?

"Oh, I think it's a great addition to the SEC. You have two great programs that have great traditions that have great fan support. I think it just continues to sort of -- the map of the SEC, it is stronger than ever. I think the competition is going to be -- it's always been difficult. It's going to be even more challenging because you've got two really, really good programs who have consistently, if you look at the past, have been, you know, Top-10 programs for a lot of years, won national championships.

So they are going to add a lot to the competition. I think with the new scheduling that we'll have in the future, it's more good games for fans, more diversity in who you play. So there's a lot of positives about it. From a coaching standpoint, it's going to be much more challenging to be able to compete week-in and week-out. I think when you look at the SEC, the thing that separates it is not the top, but the depth, how many good teams there are.

There was one year where I think we played nine teams -- when we won the championship that we played nine teams that were in the Top 15 or something, I can't remember the year. A lot of that was playing good teams in the playoffs, we played a good team in the SEC Championship Game but you also played a whole bunch of good teams throughout the course of the season and that's one of the biggest challenges I think to be able to play with a level of consistency when you have six, seven or eight really difficult games, as opposed to two or three. Because consistency and performance and playing at a high level becomes a premium, which in all sports, that's always the challenge. You know, how are we going to play this day, and how are we going to accept this challenge and do it week-in and week-out.

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you all for what you do for college athletics. You create a lot of interest in the fan base, and a lot of positive self-gratification for the players who play the game, and I know that we all appreciate that. You create great brands for a lot of programs and you create a lot of interest in college football. So we thank you very much for that and we appreciate you more than you know. So thank you very much and Roll Tide. Thanks."

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Everything Alabama football coach Nick Saban said at SEC Media Days 2023