The Herd with Colin Cowherd - The Herd Saturday Special Podcast: 08/11/2018

Episode Date: August 11, 2018

Colin talks with Author and Podcast Host James Andrew Miller to discuss his latest podcast series with Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban. The talk about the culture he created in Tuscaloosa as well as why he hasn't gone back to the NFL in this exclusive podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise,

breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headlines. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel. Help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, guys? This is Clivert Taylor the Fourth. And on my podcast, The Cliverts Show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff. Like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this linebacker walks up to me. He goes, hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her.

What? Time out. Quarterback on office blue with 42. Hey, Wreck, my mama want you to weigh better. What? Hey, Miss Parker. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season, and I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was hiring. you just understood.

That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis, coming to her, he's like, you know, I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. Welcome to our Saturday podcast. Really interesting guest today, who you know Jim Miller, bestselling author, will be coming up. But before we start, I want to talk about Peter Millar. It's a company founded 17 years ago in 2001 with a single cashmere sweater.

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I get up in the morning, go for coffee. Looks classy. Afternoon, go hit golf balls. Looks great. Want to go to dinner in the summer, but I don't want to wear heavy clothes. Looks fantastic. The performance shorts I'm wearing are the most comfortable I've ever worn. Right now, you can head over to petermalar.com slash her to check out some of their favorites.

Be sure to use my link and you'll get compliment. elementary shipping. That's key and a free hat. That's Peter Millar, M-I-L-A-R dot com slash heard. Peter Millar.com slash heard. Founded 17 years ago with a single cashmere sweater. It's a premium American lifestyle brand. All sorts, wide range of casual sportswear. Well, he's my friend. He's a best-selling author. He's written several books, and I've read all of them, front-to-back multiple times, live from New York. His book about Saturday Night Live is a must-read. ESPN book, the Powerhouse CAA. He's also the host of a podcast now. Fascinating work, as always, deep diving on stuff. Origins with James Andrew Miller.

You can get it on iTunes. And right now his latest session is Origins is called Origins of a Champion about Nick Saban. Now, when I think of you, I think of these big, broad, I mean, you're a tennis player. You write these in-depth books. And I think, oh, God, Nick Saban, he's not going to let you. in on anything. He's going to be terribly difficult. So your perceptions and the reality of dealing with Sabins, how did you kind of reconcile all that stuff? How'd it work for you? Well, for me, I mean, going down to Tuscaloosa to sit down with Nick Saban and be, you know,

at Alabama is kind of like dealing with some of these broader topics that I do books on and other reporting on because Alabama football and Nick Saban are both such huge brands. right? I mean, it's almost like beyond the confines of college football. And so it was very interesting to kind of understand and to try and dig into, you know, why this keeps happening. Why is this guy being so successful down there? And even went into a little bit of, you know, why there wasn't that kind of success in the NFL form. You know, let's talk about that. You know, I've always seen Nick as kind of a linear thinker, compartmentalizes stuff.

He talks about the process. It can be redundant and repetitive and reductive, but I think in football that works. The NFL's got a little more star power where the player is a bigger star. In college, the coach is the star. When you look at his NFL failures, and I use that loosely because he was turning things around, but he didn't get the doctors to give him Drew Brees, or I think he'd still be in the NFL and the Bama dynasty is never created. What didn't work in the NFL, in your opinion, that does work fabulously in college?

Well, I think, first of all, you're smart for contextual purposes to point out the Drew Breast thing, because, look, there have been a lot of smart coaches, and if you don't have in the NFL, if you don't have a quarterback, then you're climbing Everest in a cold day in your shorts. So I think if he had Drew Breese, then I think it's worth thinking that things might have been different. But I think to the larger point in your question, it is. look, there's a very different dynamic, and I talked to a lot of former players there. When you're 18 and 19 years old, and you're just out of your house for the first time, and you're in this new system, the coaches have, particularly somebody with a reputation like Haven,

there's much more control over these players than NFL players have. And as a result, I think that you can have a level of discipline and that fear, punishment and a lot more, for lack of better phrase, law and order on your program, than you can in the NFL. And I think that that's why, look, I start the podcast off by talking about the fact that after last year's championship, you know, there were NFL teams that were interested in him coming over. And I think, to his credit, that's why he decided, you know what, I'm going to stay here.

I like this. I like this dynamic. I like the control I have. and I don't need to be going to the NFL now at this stage of my career. It's just, you know, particularly when you talk about the process, because the process is it's redone by design. That's the whole thing. It's like, you know, you're like literally practicing not until you can't get it,

until you get it right, until you can't get it wrong. That's very, you know, it's, to some degree it's factory work. You know what I mean? It's just no mistakes. You interviewed Lane Kiffin, Joe Girardi, his wife. Let's start with Kiffin. Kiffin has some star power. In fact, I would say, of all Nick's assistants, Lane has the most star power.

What's Nick's, what is Lane say about that time in Kastakalusa? Oh my God, Lane is the gift that keeps giving. Because it's like, he's like an iceberg, because you see just a little bit of them. But then all this stuff is going on underneath the surface. and one of the things that I was, you know, I think able to do with them, what they did it so interesting for me is there's like a little,

it's not passive aggressive, but he's like, well, now, I'm not going to say that they would have, and then you just kind of go deeper and deeper with them, and eventually, yeah, they would have won. Yeah, if I was the offensive coordinator, if I hadn't been taken out of the game, yeah, they would have won that game.

And it's like, whoa, okay. And it's like, yeah, Pete Carroll is fun to work for. I don't use the word fun for Alabama. I mean, he, like, he's got a, lot going on his mind, and as much as he tries to kind of, you know, stay between the emotional 40-yard lines, he, you know, there's just so much going on that when it seeps out, it's, it's beyond fascinating. No, and I think it's important to remember Jim Miller joining me,

bestselling author, Origins, the origin of a champion about Nick Saban, that Nick did Lane a great service hiring him. Lane's reputation was garbage. He had the USC disaster. He'd been seen as very difficult to work with. Saban really saved his career, but I do find it's fascinating that Kiffin loves to tweak Nick, even on Twitter. And I think there's a rock star quality to Lane that Nick secretly kind of respects, but is annoyed by, if that makes sense? Lane kind of... I think it makes sense, and I think they fed into each other because Kiffin told me something which I started laughing about, because, you know, obviously he had that

experience in Tennessee, which was, you know, a tad of skew, as Jerry Seinfeld would say. And he found out when Lane heard that everybody in the F.C. had gotten wind of the the possibility that Nick would even be thinking about hiring Kevin. Kiffin said, oh, I got the job now, because he knew that Saban wanted to be his own guy, and he wanted to make sure that he wasn't going to listen to anyone saying who he can hire and who he can hire. So the more the protests were like, no, we don't want Link Kippen in the SEC, and don't even think about it. Like Link, given, sure enough, I got the job.

Nobody's going to tell, nobody's going to tell Nick Saban who he can hire. Yeah, in the three-episode series about Sabin, Jim Miller interviews Joe. Gerardy, Lane Kiffin, and Nick's wife, Terry. Now, let's move into that. Nick doesn't give us a lot of Nick. He talks about the process. He talks about things that football fans would be fascinated with. My hunch is that Terry's got much more power in the relationship than maybe the casual

football fan would think. In fact, I think they call her in the South Miss Terry. What was he willing to, you know, you, you, you know, you. First of all, the fact that you sat down with Terry is great. That makes me want to listen to this episode. Don't give me too much. I want people to go in and listen to this. But what was a fascinating dynamic here with Terry and Nick to you?

Well, I mean, look, they've been married for over 45 years. They knew each other in, like, junior high school. So I definitely wanted to, I mean, I take the word origins kind of too seriously sometimes, but let's face it, I started this podcast. with West Virginia and Nick's dad, Big Nick, and talked to Nick about it and talked to Terry about it. But there's a sequence of the end of episode one, which, you know, I've heard from a lot of Alabama fans in the last 24 hours.

She's pretty extraordinary. And when she was going through this with me, I must say, it was pretty impressive. It really was almost startling. And I think that, you know, what you begin to realize is that. it's almost like he controls everything and then she controls him. Not that she controls him, so to speak, but I don't think, who else does he look up to? Do you know what I mean? So many people, like Joe Girardi is there.

Oh, my gosh, I invited Nick to come and speak to the Yankees, and he's been a mentor, and he's been, and it's like, you know, you almost feel like the Pope and Lassie love Nick Saven, or at least look up to him. And yet, who does he look up to? And I thought it was really interesting to kind of delve into that with Terry. The other thing that I kind of toyed around with, Saving, was I said to him, would you like to work for yourself? I really thought about that. And I said, well, think about the way you are as a boss.

Now think about, would you like to work for you? And he gave like a pretty thoughtful answer. It was, and I could tell that he was really trying to be honest with it. And I thought that was fascinating that he would at least, you know, try and go there on something like that. But the two of them are rather formidable. Get back to Jim in a second. Upstart has revolutionized how we borrow money by going beyond the traditional FICA score to offer personal loans, taking into account factors like your job experience, education when determining your interest rates.

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Past series, by the way, I've been Curb Your Enthusiasm, College Game Day. Is Nick aware, I mean, he's a 60-year-old guy, mid-60s, he's still got incredible passion. Sometimes he blows up on television. And unlike most jobs, his job is public. it's public consumption. Is he aware sometimes when he loses it, that it perhaps is damaging to his brand? I mean, how does he, again, I'll use the word reconcile,

with his success and sometimes his passion like overflows, that he's going crazy and throwing a headset. You ever think that sometimes he thinks, God, I wish I wouldn't have done that? No, in fact, I might even go so far as to say that he may have already planned that. I think that there are times when, look, talked about it with Kiffin because there were times that he he took Kiven to the, you know,

to the woodshed and like literally on camera. He knew the cameras were on them and he just chewed him out right on the sidelines in front of the team, in front of their fans, in front of a national television audience. And I believe that there's, that Nick Saven is so disciplined or you could use Machiavellian or you could use just so into the process for himself that that was part of of an overall design at that game for that game. And it may have been to literally incentivize a team or to warn the team that he's in that kind of mood. It may have been because he really did need to shut Kiffin down, and he may have decided

that morning in the shower. If Kiffin gets crazy on me again today, I'm going to literally chew his head off in front of everyone. So I don't have to deal with him for the rest of the game like that. I mean, I don't think he's afraid. Let's put it this way. I don't think he's afraid to go to those kinds of places and worry about what it's going to do to his image or brand. In fact, with a lot of people, it only enhances it.

Yeah, that's interesting. Happy. Happy can be a little, you know, it's a term, is somebody happy? I think Nick is certainly satisfied with his place. He's the greatest coach in the history of college football. I mean, if you think of how long USC's dynasty was, it was. half as long as Alabama's current dynasty, and Alabama's probably got a much longer tail another five years. If I said happiness, content, do you think that, how do those words

line up with Saban to you? Planet doesn't, like his universe doesn't, like you, when you go your culture there, you're, you know, you're hanging out with everybody, you're calm with everybody. Of course, everybody's working hard, but you can let yourself relax. You can joke around with everybody. You want, you know, your set is a very comfortable set. You walk into the building, and I talk about this in the podcast, you walk into that athletic. And like, from secretaries to maintenance people, like, there's not a lot of margin of error. There's high expectations on everyone. And the weird thing is about this particular ecosystem is, like we've always been trained that when people are really uptight,

and when they feel like, you know, they're on a high wire rack and there's no net, they're not going to do their best. And somehow, this is the exception. This is like why Nick Haven and Alabama sometimes can be an outlier, because it is that tense, and yet he's able to get the best of people from that position. And so that means that you have to have a certain type of player, you have to have a certain type of employee who is willing to operate like that. And, you know, that's part of the whole training and the process because it's like an indoctrination. You're going to – it's like you're going to breathe different air. So I'm sorry, but that's a long way of answering your question, which is I don't think fun, happiness.

Those are not things that, you know, as part of the football experience, coaching or even in the offseason, that Nick Saban necessarily wants, needs, delivers, or, races. It's just not. It's just, he's just wired a different way. And so if you buy into that system, then you're probably going to do really well. And for those people who can't buy in that system, go someplace else because you are not going to be able to survive. It's a three-episode season of Origins with Nick Saban. And he talks to Joe Girardi and Lane Kiffin and Nick's wife, Miss Terry, I think they call her in Tuscaloosa. I'm so glad you tackle this. I always think of you as, you know, you do these massive, almost international level things,

CAA and live from New York and, you know, college football, it feels so southern to me. So I love the fact that you went deep diving down there. Jim, it's a pleasure. By the way, I don't know where you're at now. We need to have coffee again. We have a lot to discuss. Yeah. The world is changing.

Every day. Netflix is taking over the world. I may be on the street soon. I don't know what the future of television is. It feels like it's been more fluid now than ever, doesn't it? I think that sometimes in our lifetime, you look, you know, five years ago, boy, a lot was going on then. We didn't realize it. Now, in current day, we realize it every day that so much is going on.

It's right before us. Yeah, video on demand. I was telling my wife the other day. I only go to movies now if my son wants to go. So I've seen Ant Man, I've seen anything with Robert Downey. It's an interesting world where I was a theater kid. You know, I love going to the movies. And now I sit home with my wife and I binge watch television.

And the audience, the consumer now controls it on their terms. And I don't know if I love it. I don't know if I'm petrified of it, but we live in a different world. And the smart are going to survive and the nimble are going to survive. Has covering it changed for you? Covering the media? Do you sense a palpable fear and anxiety within the industry? I think that there's a lot of shaking out that's happening, obviously,

when you look at Disney and Fox and other things. But I think that the real – we're finally at a point now where people are saying, okay, we built all these incredible pipes, and we got our speeds down, and we got delivery systems down, and distribution to your Apple watch and all that. And now we've kind of like made this big circle and we're back to, okay, but what is the content? Yes. And you know what? In some ways, whenever I get carsick over the state of the industry or how crazy some things are, in some ways, that's saving grace.

Because it really is going to come back to people like yourselves and how you do interviews and how you tell stories and the way that you want to present your own brand and whether or not people are going to want to want. to spend time with you because there's hundreds, if not thousands of choices. And so I think now more than ever, you know, that old Hacchney expression that we had like 10 years ago, content is king. Now content is like the only thing because everything else is kind of like beside the point. We can get it anywhere. So I think that, you know, the idea of how people are going to differentiate themselves and what kind of stories they're going to tell and how long they're going to tell those stories,

that to me is like, that's the real interesting. thing for the next couple years. You know, it's interesting, Jim. There's two models. There is the Rush Limbaugh model. I'm going to create a Bill Maher model. I'm just going to do content. Then there's the Oprah Glenn Beck model is I'm going to own stuff. I'm going to be the CEO and do content. And I have come to terms that I create content. And I don't have the, I don't have the personality to be a boss to multiple people and do that day-to-day hiring. You know, it's really, it's funny, but in my, when I started this career, you didn't have the option. You were a content provider.

Now there are people, uh, dynamic performers that can do both. They can do content or they can go Glenn Beck. They can go Oprah. They can go Howard Stern. And I think your point is like if you're a quarterback that throws from the pocket, don't try to be Russell Wilson. Like doing two things in this industry. Sometimes, Jim, I guess my point is, choices.

create anxiety. And I think anxiety dilutes the creative content. So I have pulled back more into just doing content, but I think now broadcasters are offered both content and running a business. And I think it's problematic. I think I go back to certain people and the reason I go to Bill Maher or the reason I will go to, you know, regardless of the person, I like the quality of their product. And I think sometimes, I don't just long-winded here, once you move past the Oprah Glenn Beck, you go into that stage, I fear that it dilutes my content.

That makes sense, right? I guess I'm going to just say, in your case, it may not wind up being so binary con, because three years from now, you can find somebody to run something for you, but you may all of a sudden find a 24, 25-year-old who's you think is incredibly. incredibly talented and who has a wonderful future ahead and they're going to come to you and say, I want you to mentor me and I want you to executive produce my show. It's not going to take a lot of your time, but I need your input. And so it may not just be you, you know, that's part of this, you know, your ecosystem. It may be that you're going to find time, especially as you be more critically, let's say, protective of your time, that you may have time to start mentoring and start kind of shepherding some other things that are important to you that you can't do just by yourself.

And then you just hire somebody to run that company. I mean, Oprah, you know, Oprah likes to run her company and Glenn Beck likes to run his company, but that doesn't mean that you'd have to do that. You get somebody that you really trust and you have faith in, and then you just tell them you take care of that stuff. I want to take care of the content, and the content may wind up including other things other than your own shows. Are you available for hire currently? Jim Miller.

Jim, it's a pleasure. Let's get coffee soon. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, bestselling author, folks. It's on iTunes. Origins. It's called The Origins of a Champion. And the first episode's House of Saban out on iTunes.

Good stuff. Thanks, Jim. Thanks so much. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode we're cutting through the noise,

breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel. Help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

What's up, guys? This is Clever Taylor the 4th. And on my podcast, The Cliverts Show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff. Like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker walks up to me. He goes, hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her. What?

Time out. Quarterback on office blue 42. Hey, ref, my mama want you to wave at her. What? Hey, Ms. Park. Listen to the Cliverts show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was hungry. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow.

Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to you, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.