Top quotes from Nick Saban during Rose Bowl Media Day

How is everybody doing today? First of all, happy new year. We’re excited about being here and having the opportunity to play in a Rose Bowl, which is a fantastic opportunity for our players and playing against a really good team.

Excited to be in the playoffs. Proud of the way our team has sort of developed through the season and overcome a lot of adversity and showed resiliency to have the opportunity to get here.

Now it’s all about can you finish. That’s why we play the games.

Well, I think you’re always concerned about when you have a layoff, how are you going to respond. I’ve had a lot of confidence in our players. I trust our players. I think they’ve worked hard to prepare for this game.

But you’ve got to have the right mindset and you’ve got to know what it takes to go out and play against a really good team. There always are concerns about how are we going to respond, but I think I have those concerns when we play every week (chuckling).

Just because we had time off, it’s really no different.

Well, I think what we did as a staff and as an organization is we tried to focus on what we needed to do to improve and get better and how could we make our team better.

I do think the players responded magnificently to the challenges that we had, really focused, wanted to prove something, were not happy with the circumstance that they created for themselves.

That was a real motivating factor for them. I thought our coaching staff did a really good job of sort of making the corrections and adjustments that we needed to make to give our players the best opportunity to be successful, and they responded well to it and it worked out really well.

Well, this is a fantastic opportunity for our players. The Rose Bowl does a great job from a hospitality standpoint. They have the reputation of being the granddaddy of them all.

Kind of growing up in the Big Ten I think for 12 years, that was always the goal, can you get to the Rose Bowl.

But every bowl that we’ve been to and every opportunity that we’ve had to play in the Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Peach Bowl, whatever the venue was, it’s always been first class.

The people that are responsible for all of those bowls, including the Fiesta Bowl, all do a wonderful job. I think we’re just pleased and happy to have the opportunity to be here.

Well, this team has been fun because the relationships on the team are really good. The leadership on the team is really good. The buy-in that the players have has been really good.

I think that you’re always trying to develop guys putting the team forward. Everybody can have more success if we all play together.

People buying into the principles and values that help them do that, having positive energy about trying to do that, being able to be responsible to do your job at a high level and a high standard is something that we sometimes as fans can take for granted, but that’s just something everybody wants to do.

But it really is pretty special when you have a group that does that, and this group certainly did, and that made it a lot of fun to be around them, and the relationships on the team made it even more inspiring.

Tommy has done a fantastic job. I was really impressed with Tommy when we spoke to him about taking the job. He’s very bright. Players respond well to him. He’s a really good teacher. He’s a really good quarterback coach. I think he’s done a magnificent job of developing all of our quarterbacks.

You see Jalen all the time, but I think they’ve all improved under his tutelage. He’s got really good planning ability in terms of — you always look at the opponent, and you want to have a plan for an opponent and then get the players to buy into it and execute it, and I think that’s something that he’s done a really, really good job of.

He didn’t sort of stay in the place of this is what we’re going to do no matter what, this kind of can adapt and change in order to teach the players what we have, and I think he’s just done a marvelous job of that, and it sort of transpired our team offensively, which I think had a lot to do with the success.

Yeah, I know Jim. I’ve known his family for years. I loved his dad. When I was a young coach, his dad was a secondary coach at Michigan, and I was an up and coming, trying to learn how to coach a secondary, and he was always helpful to me.

I’ve always had a tremendous amount of respect for the family. His dad was a great coach, John is a good coach, Jim is a good coach. Tom Crean was on the staff with Coach Izzo at Michigan State and we had a relationship, and he’s married to Jim’s sister. I’ve had a tremendous amount of respect for the family for years.

They’ve got a really good team. They’re well-coached. He’s done a tremendous job with his team, so I have nothing but respect and admiration for what he’s been able to accomplish.

Well, we had some really good rat poison early. It was almost like Wheaties because everybody criticized us and said we weren’t any good and we were done and Coach Saban is past his prime and all that. It was like eating Wheaties, breakfast of champions. That helped us.

So now can we handle the success, that’s the next question.

He’s really instinctive. He’s a fast reactor. He’s not intimidated by any circumstance or situation. He’s really, really committed to learning how to do things. He never wants to be wrong. He kind of takes that approach to how he prepares.

I mean, just like learning the defense, he came with the offense every day to try to learn the calls, learn the defense, learn the adjustments. That’s not the kind of commitment that most freshmen coming in have.

Obviously it paid off for us and paid off for him in terms of how he plays.

It’s probably a lot mindset, how important it is to the players, because a good team is going to have good players. A great team is going to have good players. A championship team has got to have good players.

But probably the mindset and ability to sustain the focus, to execute, to buy into the things that it takes to play winning football, whether it’s discipline, togetherness, buying into the principles and values of what it takes to be successful, positive energy and attitude, leadership. Some of the things that contribute to it.

But I think you’ve got to have all those elements to win a championship.