When Nick Saban retired, college football fans quickly conjured up their favorite memories of the legendary Alabama head coach, including their favorites from 17 years’ worth of memorable quotes.

He arrived at every press conference with a purpose. Saban would routinely deliver an opening statement with a theme, almost as though he’d prepped a lecture for the reporters in attendance, or at least for the players who may catch the video later on YouTube or TikTok. Typically, he would repeat a philosophical approach to a practice, week or season he hope might communicate in a way his team would apply successfully on and off of the football field.

Either way, at the pressers or in interviews, Saban’s message always rang loud and clear. And despite the intended audience, his fans ate up those pearls of wisdom, so often that you frequently see them shared as graphics or videos across all social media platforms celebrating the coach’s legacy, before and after his shocking retirement.

Below are 10 of our all-time favorite Nick Saban quotes.

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Presenting the ‘All-Saban team’ of Alabama football

“What I would like for every football team to do that we play is to sit there and say, ‘I hate playing against these guys. I hate playing ‘em. Their effort, their toughness, their relentless resiliency to go out every play and focus and play the next play and compete in the game for 60 minutes in the game — I can’t handle it.’…That’s the kind of football team we want.”

In his introductory press conference — held Jan. 4, 2007 — he laid bare his philosophy on coaching, competition and, well, life. He emphasized how he wanted to help his players grow on and off the field, and he really just explained what the next two decades of college football would look like with Alabama back on the mountaintop. Sixteen years, six national championships, eight SEC titles, four Heisman-winners, 44 first-round NFL Draft picks and countless All-Americans later, Saban more than delivered on his promises.

“How much does this game mean to you? Because if it means something to you, you can’t stand still. You understand? You play fast. You play strong. You go out there and dominate the guy you’re playing against, and make his ass quit! That’s our trademark! That’s our M.O. as a team! That’s what people know us as!”

Beating his former team in their own stadium certainly meant something to Saban, even if he wanted it more so for his players. Before his first game coaching in Tiger Stadium since he left LSU for the Miami Dolphins, Saban delivered a fiery pregame speech to his players, including the “Make his ass quit!” mantra that Alabama fans have adopted as representative of the coach’s entire tenure in Tuscaloosa. Perhaps this is the origin of “joyless murderball.” Alabama won a 27-21 overtime thriller.

“I want everybody here to know: This is not the end. This is the beginning.”

Seventeen years since their last national championship, Alabama finally reached the top of the college football mountaintop again after an undefeated 2009 campaign, culminating with a 37-21 win over Texas in the BCS title game. Instead of a parade, Alabama held a championship celebration inside Bryant-Denny Stadium, with Saban and the team on-stage to recognize their achievements. On a frigid January day in Tuscaloosa, fans felt warm and fuzzy when even Saban suggested this title would be the first of many.

“Mediocre people don’t like high-achievers, and high-achievers don’t like mediocre people.”

This is a quote you often see shared by Alabama fans. Speaking in Coleman Coliseum, Saban delivered an emphatic message about team chemistry. He insisted that if everyone on a team doesn’t buy in to the same values and principles and work towards the same high standard, they will not achieve success. He compared it to his Tide team’s spring practice that season. “You know what my goal for spring practice is?” Saban asked. “Get the right guys on the bus. Get them in the right seats. And get the wrong guys off the bus.”

“Y’all don’t remember the Georgia Southern game, do you? I don’t think we had a guy on that field that didn’t play in the NFL, and about four or five of them were first-round draft picks. And I think that team won a national championship, but I’m not sure. And they ran through our ass like s–t through a tin horn, man. And we could not stop them. Could not stop them. Could not stop them because we couldn’t get a look in practice.”

The Tin Horn game. Bama won by 24 points in 2011 thanks to Trent Richardson’s 175 rushing yards and two touchdowns, but the Eagles’ triple-option offense gave a historically dominant Tide defense more than it could handle at times. In fact, just watch Saban in the clip above.

“I don’t have anything else to say about it. So don’t ask. There is no more. I know you would like to some kind of way extract something out of this bottle that’s not there. It’s not there.”

When reports surfaced that longtime Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart would accept the head-coaching job at Georgia, the media asked about it, prompting Saban to try his hand at prop comedy. “I don’t have anything else to say about it,” Saban said, reaching for the Coca-Cola bottle sitting atop his podium. “So don’t ask. There is no more. I know you would like to some kind of way extract something out of this bottle that’s not there. It’s not there.” He then said media “speculate and create things and then you want people to respond to it,” then saying they could find an answer in the Coke bottle “because I don’t know anything more about it. I told you everything I know, so you can ask the bottle, but don’t ask me.”

“I’m trying to get our players to listen to me instead of listening to you guys. All that stuff you write about how good we are. All that stuff they hear on ESPN. It’s like poison. It’s like taking poison. Like rat poison.”

Once again speaking about the influence of outside voices on his football team, specifically when people in the media hype how great Alabama is after a big win, Saban made it clear what effect it can have on a team working towards the ultimate goal. The 2017 team would go on to win the national championship, and “rat poison” has come up a few more times since.

“I still like both guys. Both guys are good players. I think both guys can help our team, all right? So why do you continually try to get me to say something that doesn’t respect one of them? I’m not going to, so quit asking!”

After dominating Louisville in the 2018 season-opener, following speculation on the offseason quarterback battle between Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa, Saban snapped at ESPN reporter Maria Taylor during the on-field postgame interview. She asked Saban what he learned about each of his quarterbacks after watching them play, and he then vented, with Taylor unfairly catching the brunt of it. He wanted to protect his players from widespread media scrutiny, but he took heat for singling out Taylor when she merely asked about their performances after an impressive win. She took it in stride, and Saban later apologized.

“I hope we elect to kick ass.”

In November 2018, a caller during Saban’s radio show asked the coach about his plans for the coin toss before the upcoming game at LSU. He asked: If you win the toss, Coach, will you elect to kick or will you elect to receive? Saban paused and then said. “I hope we elect to kick ass is what I hope we do,” he said, drawing laughs and cheers from the Baumhower’s crowd. Alabama won 29-0.

“Sometimes the best lessons you learn are when you do have failings. You can always learn more when you don’t do something exactly right. It’s human nature to be more willing to learn when things don’t go right.”

Saban delivered this message to his team on several occasions, perhaps most memorably after Alabama’s College Football Playoff championship game loss to Clemson at the end of the 2016 season. He said it after the loss to LSU in 2019, after Texas A&M his team in 2022. He hoped Alabama would use the losses as motivation to correct any mistakes that didn’t let them finish in the way they wanted to, thus not wasting the lessons defeat and adversity teach. He continued in 2021: “I think you don’t want to waste the opportunity that when you did things that weren’t successful, how can I improve on those things so that I become a better player? My performance is better, it helps the team more. So when I say don’t waste a failing, it’s not getting frustrated with the fact that you failed. It’s your response to the failure and how you can sort of correct and do it better the next time.”