Nick Saban’s first championship winning QB shares the biggest lessons learned from playing under him

Nick Saban is one of the most legendary college football head coaches of all time. After winning his first National Championship as the head coach of the LSU Tigers in 2003, he would go a few years without winning. He eventually took the head coaching job with the Alabama Crimson Tide in 2007 and went on a dominant run. He won six National Championships with the Crimson Tide.

Back when he was the head coach at LSU, Matt Mauck was the quarterback from 2001 to 2003. He did not go on to have a tremendous NFL career, but he became a National Champion playing for Nick Saban.

On Thursday, Mauck appeared on 'Always College Football with Greg McElroy' to speak about Nick Saban. McElroy asked Mauck if there was anything he took from Saban that translated to his everyday life.

"You know I think to Coach Saban's credit he may be a curmudgeon," Mauck said. "People might not get to know him and be buddy buddy with him but to me, his focus and attention to detail is just something you're envious of. When you talked about you guys won it and the next year was worse for you. You know that saying that you're either getting better or getting worse."

"You're never staying the same. He always gets better I mean always gets better. I think you even see it now. He didn't look that natural on TV when he first started and he really transformed and he looks great. He's really good and I think he probably knew I'm not great at this and he did everything possible to make sure he was gonna be good at it."

Nick Saban shares life lessons he learned from his father that he applied to coaching

Over the course of a career that spanned several decades, Nick Saban became one of the most legendary head coaches in college football history. In a recent appearance on 'The Pivot,' Saban spoke about life lessons he learned from his father.

"The first thing was having compassion for other people," Saban said. "That was the number one thing. But the second was you’ve got to be responsible for your own self-determination and doing your job."

Having compassion for his players allowed him to connect with players as he got older. He was able to be sympathetic to players who performed poorly while still ensuring that everyone maintained a high work ethic.