Yesterday, when asked about the Texas players on his roster returning to the Lone Star state for the first time for a game (to face Texas A&M Saturday) since Hurricane Harvey reeked havoc to the Houston area, Nick Saban offered up a great personal story from his childhood.
Beyond all the help they provided to players with families affected during the aftermath of Irma, Saban admitted that he hadn't really thought a whole lot about that situation this week and viewed their trip to College Station as more of a business trip. Then he shared that great childhood story.
"It's kind of like my dad used to tell me, when I would go and work at the [family gas] station. My girlfriend had broken up with me, so I was treating the customers bad, and so he said 'What's wrong with you today?'"
"I said, 'My girlfriend broke up with me.' So he said 'Well, you've got one problem, but if you keep treating the customers bad you're going to have two more. I'm going to fire ya, and then I'm going to whoop your ass for getting fired. So you're not going to have a girlfriend. You're not going to have a job, and you're going to get your tail whipped.'"
"So whatever happened in the hurricane, happened. And it's a bad thing, and we want to support everybody in every way that we can. and we certainly did that as much as we could. But if we don't go out there and play a good game, we're going to have all the problems that they had from the hurricane, and then we're going to have the problem that we lost. So it kind of goes back to what my dad said, I think."
Hear Saban share the story at the 1:30 mark.
https://youtu.be/-3gKStsmyYs?t=90