Add Nick Saban to the list of people who’ve had to find new ways to work while social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Alabama football coach said Wednesday that he finally has his own email account.
“I’ve come a long way,” Saban said during an Instagram Live with ESPN’s Maria Taylor. “It was hard to communicate when you have to be by yourself and you always depend on somebody else to get your emails and messages and all that. They were sending them all to Miss Terry (Saban’s wife), and she fired me. She said, ‘I’m not dealing with your stuff anymore,’ and so I had to do it on my own.”
Saban spoke about the daily routine while coaches and players are separated, from Zoom meetings with players to video lessons on specific plays. He said he believes the ability to continue with a routine has been helpful for the coaches and the players.
“They’ve been great,” he said. “Maybe the whole idea that there’s not a whole lot else you can do because of social distancing, people trying to stay at home as much as possible, all the other sort of health parameters that we’ve been given… Maybe this is something they look forward to, because there’s not a whole lot to do. I think being able to stay focused on what you can control right now rather than getting bored or sort of losing focus, because of this circumstance — you either control the circumstance, or the circumstance controls you. So we’re trying to control the circumstance the best we can.”
And that includes finding new ways to communicate for Saban, who also said he didn’t use text messaging previously.
“Calling me is about as far as it goes on the text part of it,” he said. “But I can actually get an email now and read what somebody — I mean, I’ve really come a long way.”