Yahoo News It took a global pandemic for Nick Saban to start using email
The coronavirus pandemic has brought upon a major change for Alabama head coach Nick Saban.
The 68-year-old Saban revealed in an interview with ESPN that he now uses email. That’s right. Over his illustrious coaching career that has included six national championships, Saban has never used an email account — until now.
“I’ve come a long way,” Saban said with a smile.
"They were sending them all to Mrs. Terry, aight. She fired me. She said, 'I'm not dealing with your stuff anymore.'"
—Nick Saban tells @MariaTaylor that he has his own email account now 😂 pic.twitter.com/Pdqe74w3aI— ESPN (@espn) April 8, 2020
Saban explained that it became too much of a hassle to have his wife relay all of the messages that were headed his way.
“It was hard to communicate when you have to be by yourself and you depend on somebody else to get your emails, messages and all that. It just didn’t work,” Saban said. “They were sending them all to Miss Terry, and she fired me. She said, ‘I’m not dealing with your stuff anymore,' so I had to do it on my own."
Saban has always been vocal about his aversion to some forms of technology. He isn’t a big texter and prefers phone calls and face-to-face conversations. But during times of quarantine, he has embraced meeting with staff members via Zoom every morning and speaking with recruits over FaceTime.
Saban said last week that he and his staff are checking in daily on Alabama players over Zoom. The calls go beyond football. He said the check-ins are to see how players and their families are doing and to also make sure they are staying on top of their schoolwork.
“We have a check-in with every player on Zoom, so every position coach has all his players on Zoom,” Saban said. “‘How you doing academically, what’s the wellness of your family and yourself, any issues or problems?’ Then we do sort of a football install and show them videos of a play and the coaching points of how we make this play work. That’s basically what we’re trying to do to keep the players engaged. It’s worked as well as we’ve anticipated to this point.”
The SEC is allowing coaches to meet with their players for two hours a week via video calls.
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