Saban welcomes ESPN’s Smith, Tebow to lake home for SportsCenter feature
Known for “the process” that has helped him win the college football national championship in four of the past seven years, University of Alabama coach Nick Saban showed a different side in an interview that debuted Sunday on SportsCenter.
Saban spent a day at his home on Georgia’s Lake Burton with ESPN college football analyst Tim Tebow and reporter Marty Smith, the first time television cameras had been permitted at the location. During a walk by the lake and a boat ride, Saban opened up about life, family and more in a revealing interview and even humorously invited Tebow and Smith to jump into the lake with him.
“We’re always striving to do something a little different and get these larger-than-life personalities out of their typical element,” said Smith, who reports on college football and other sports for SportsCenter. “We all know Coach Saban in a certain light, as this uber-competitive, process-driven person, and we see how meticulous he is in every facet of his job and in quotes with the media.
“So we wanted to get him out of that norm,” he said. “We wanted to do something extremely authentic to him. And as viewers see in the piece, that lake house for him and [Saban’s wife] Miss Terry and their family is that refuge, it’s that place where he can remove himself from the football static.
“We all know what he’s done and who he is in the football area, but nobody has really ever tapped the evolution of the man, and it’s fascinating,” Smith said. “He admitted to us in the piece that early in his career, his priorities were completely geared towards professional excellence and that made his family life suffer a little bit. His focus was all winning, winning, winning and as a result, his children’s lives sped by him.
“And probably the most indelible moment for me during that entire interview was him saying spend time with your kids and engage with your kids while they’re young because they’re going grow up and they’ll be gone,” he said. “You expect that out of certain people but for a guy like him to say that was very dynamic. To humanize him was absolutely a goal and I’m thrilled we were able to capture that.”
SportsCenter reporter Marty Smith had to get a little help from Alabama football coach Nick Saban and ESPN college football analyst Tim Tebow during part of their recent feature shoot at Saban’s home on Lake Burton in Georgia.
“We’re walking with [Saban] on the lake edge and he’s just giving us all this great stuff about family,” said Smith. “And I’m like, ‘You’ve got this beautiful boat here you need to fire this baby up and go.’”
So, Saban, Tebow, and Smith boarded the boat – Saban in the driver’s seat, Tebow across from him and Smith between them and behind. Which is when trouble began.
“Suddenly I’m like, ‘What is going on behind me?’” Smith said. “I was so hung up in the fishing lures it completely wrapped itself through my entire shirt.”
Saban and Tebow came to Smith’s rescue, using pliers and pocketknives to free him from the fishing hooks.
“I appreciate them cutting me out of those fishing lures,” Smith said. “That’s something not in the piece that’s very funny.”
– By Andy Hall
