SEC Daily Fever: Saban Not Worried about Facing Former Assistants in Title Game

Posted: Dec 22, 2009

The media has raised the question recently whether or not Texas assistants Will Muschamp and Major Applewhite, who served under Nick Saban at LSU and Alabama respectively, give the Longhorns any advantage with their familiarity of the Tide coach as they prepare for the BCS Title Game.

Saban addressed that issue Monday:

"Who you are is more important than what you do," Saban said. "I don't think there's really a lot of changes that you can make. To do what? Are you going to trick yourself or trick them?

"We do what we do. We always do self scout, so we know what our tendencies are. We know what the other team thinks about us and what we need to do to balance that.

"Sometimes terminology things and what you call things ... and signals and things like that are all things that you want to make sure you're not letting them have an advantage on. Other than that, I don't know how we can change our team just because everybody you play knows your tendencies.

"They've watched the film. ... And we've changed some as a team since those guys have been here. I don't know what we can do different to make it better."

Saban shows that he has built the Bama program like an NFL team. He's not worried about out-scheming or tricking the opponent, but instead with the execution of his own team. When Florida had Percy Harvin and Louis Murphy a year ago, "who the Tide was" was a club not quite ready to win a title. But with a more experienced defense and equal talent in '09, Bama took the next step and now will play Texas for it all. The Title Game won't be about tricks and tendencies, just who the better team is on that night.

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