Nick Saban explains how he ‘used the media to talk to (his) players’ while coaching

Nick Saban was infamously dead-set on keeping his players from listening to outside noise. No matter how much his teams were talked up in the media, it didn’t matter: it was “rat poison,” which Saban couldn’t risk letting affect his locker room. Saban himself kept away from watching and reading coverage about his own team, he said during the premiere of ESPN’s documentary, Saban, at the Bama Theatre in Tuscaloosa on Thursday. That attitude extended to his sometimes contentious dealings with the media, where a reporter finding themselves at the other end of a Saban rant was a common occurrence....