He is Trevor Moawad, a guy who Coach Nick Saban has had hanging around his program since 2007. The results speak for themselves.
So, who is the little guy in the white windbreaker? He is a mental game coach. Alabama is one of the few programs who has a full-time mental game coach. Moawad also consults for Jimbo Fisher's Florida State team, and they are doing pretty well of late, too.
But wait a minute ... Nick Saban, the Prince of College Football Darkness, is a mental game guy? Can I be serious? Absolutely. He is one of the best.
Coach Saban is a true student and teacher of the mental game, and you can see it in the way he (and his team) talk and prepare as they approach "big" games. For instance, they are all about process ... as opposed to obsessing over results. As I listened to A.J. McCarron in the days before the BCS Championship Game against Notre Dame, he talked about how the Tide's focus was on themselves and their respective jobs. He said that they needed to focus on the task-at-hand, as opposed to worrying about what the opponent might do. I would say they did pretty well in that regard.
How important is the mental game training and coaching that the Tide is doing overall to their success? Well, their schemes and execution are pretty good ... to say the least. But Defensive Coordinator Kirby Smart says that the mindset of players is most important to their success.
More and more, when you scour the sports landscape to find great performers, you find that they are almost without exception intentionally developing a winning mindset. This is more than platitudes, too. There are specific thought patterns and things to do in this regard.
For instance, in many ways the fulcrum of a winning mindset is a good plan and routine. A good plan is how a team (and individual players) order their thoughts to give them the best chance of success. A routine is how players consistently behave -- on a macro (i.e., a day) and micro (i.e., games, pitches and plays) level to execute the plan.
When watching the pregame of the BCS National Championship Game, I noticed that some Notre Dame players were warming up and on the field hours before game time. Meanwhile, Alabama rolled up at the same time that they always do ... following their normal routine. It is a little thing, but I knew Notre Dame was in trouble. Sure, Alabama was better. But the key here is that they played better, too. They got the most of what they had by following their routine and executing their plan. They had practiced a winning mindset all year long, and it showed. Meanwhile, Notre Dame was tight, and when things started to go badly, it got ugly. Alabama, though, stayed on task until the end.
It was instructive to watch. These things happen intentionally.
As the the crux of the daily grind of mental game preparedness is plan and routine, we are going to master both this season. Our plan starts with R-E-S-T. Players, memorize it. Let it soak into your DNA and affect your game in every facet. We will have team routines, too. But to get where we can go, our players will be required to establish -- and execute -- their own routines. We are going back to basics to make our routines work to serve our plans this season.
Next time, we'll talk about some of the great things happening with TCU baseball along the same lines.
See you on the field ...
