From the Coaches Bookshelf: Game Changer

On April 27, 2011, a massive EF4 tornado ripped through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, skirting the University of Alabama campus and narrowly missing Bryant-Denny Stadium, home of the Crimson Tide. The funnel cloud could be seen from Head Coach Nick Saban’s office. The tornado missed Saban’s home by a few yards. The destruction was devastating. Over 50 lost their lives.

Living through such an experience changes people, mainly because of the way a community unites in the aftermath of such an event. In his new book, “The Storm and the Tide”, Sports Illustrated writer Lars Anderson details the events surrounding the killer storm and how it affected Saban, the Alabama football team and the entire Tuscaloosa community. Here is an excerpt.

When Saban stepped through the doors at Belk (Activity Center), he was confronted with one of the harsh new realities of life in Tuscaloosa – hundreds of people left instantly homeless. Most were lying or sitting on canvas military-style cots, but everyone seemed to still be numb with shock. No one noticed that the state’s most famous person had just entered the building. Saban could see the fright on their faces; he asked a Red Cross member what he could do. “We’ve got a thousand people in this shelter, and they need food,” he was told. The coach now had his mission. He told (Alabama Director of External Affairs Thad) Turnipseed, “I’ll pay for it. And let’s rob the football facility of every hat and shirt we’ve got. I’ll write the check for everything.”

A few hours later Saban returned to the activity center with his wife, Terry. Some of the victims’ shock may have subsided because people now recognized the coach and his wife, and soon the Sabans were surrounded. The coach offered hugs and handshakes and signed hundreds of autographs. He and Terry handed out Alabama T-shirts, caps, long-sleeved shirts and gift cards to Walmart. They helped serve plates of hot food. But more than anything, the Sabans listened. “Everyone has a story, and everyone needs to share their story,” Saban said later. “No one who was affected by this will ever be the same. Tuscaloosa will never be the same.”

For the rest of the day he would listen, story after story. The details were different each time, but the pain and confusion were always the same. He allowed victims to vent their anger or cry their despair. He met with business owners who had been picking through what was left of their livelihoods and with homeowners who had begun sorting through the crushed remnants of their lives. Some moved in silence, their eyes speaking for them with a look that screamed, What in heaven’s name will I do? Others openly sobbed, often uncontrollably. A local man with only one leg explained to Saban that he had worked for three years to purchase a specially designed truck that allowed him to drive. Now, the man said, the truck had been cart-wheeled away by the storm. Saban heard these grieving tales nonstop, and all he could do was grab those in pain, pull them close and tell them that he would do everything in his power to help.

For hours Saban comforted and consoled; he embraced more people in a four-hour stretch than he had in his whole life – and this did not come easily to him. While Saban can stand in front of a crowd of 10,000 and deliver an off-the-cuff speech that enthralls even non–football fans, he’s often achingly ill at ease in smaller groups. “Nick is a shy person,” says Phil Savage, who coached with Saban in Cleveland in the early 1990s and remains a friend. “He’s uncomfortable standing in a group of two or three people. He doesn’t make small talk because he usually just doesn’t have time for it.” Yet here he was, out in the shattered city, trying to comfort one victim after the next.

Saban eventually called Mayor Maddox. “Walt, anything you need from me, consider it done,” Saban said. “Whatever you ask.” It was a brief conversation, but Maddox was struck by the tone. He sensed that already this tornado, this tragedy, had touched something deep in Saban, perhaps even changed him.

Perhaps it had. In just a matter of hours Saban had certainly come to understand that he was more than a football coach. He was the person in this town who others looked to for assurance. He was the one these people wanted to tell their story to. It did impact Saban; facing these survivors was breaking down at least a few of the walls that he had so carefully built around himself, walls that had stood strong for decades. A changed man? His wife said that the hours and days after the tornado were the first time in his professional life that he stopped thinking about football.

Yes, he was changed – his friends attest to that. “Absolutely,” says Turnipseed. “From April 27 forward, he no longer spoke in coach-speak to the team or the town. His whole speech from that day onward became about, What does it mean to be alive? He started talking about how life is all about the relationships you build, and he himself started building new relationships. Before the tornado he only had a couple of close friends; a year later he had 10 or 12 close friends. No, it’s not a lot, but he really widened his inner circle. Before he had always been so isolated from what everyone would consider a normal life, but after the storm he began getting out into the community and really making Tuscaloosa his home. And make no mistake,” Turnipseed continues, “he told his players every day from April 27 forward that they were no longer playing for themselves; they were now playing for Tuscaloosa. That was a constant theme, and that was powerful.”

Excerpted from “The Storm and the Tide”.
Copyright © 2014 by Lars Anderson. Reprinted with
permission from Sports Illustrated Books,
an imprint of Time Home Entertainment Inc.




Excerpted with permission from “Against the Grain:
A Coach’s Wisdom on Character, Faith, Family and Love”, by Bill Courtney, with Michael Arkush (Weinstein Books, 2014).
Visit https://www.coachbillcourtney.com for more information about the book and where to buy it – Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and independent bookstores.