Why is Nick Saban smiling? Does Alabama football coach know something we don't? | Deas

INDIANAPOLIS — Why is Nick Saban smiling?

The Alabama football coach got off the team's flight early Friday evening wearing a spiffy leather bomber jacket and walked across the tarmac into a receiving area where he held a brief arrival news conference in advance of the College Football Playoff championship. He started with a joke about why the briefing wasn't happening outside, where it was 18 degrees. He told it with a beaming smile.

Saban has been smiling a lot lately. He's quipped and grinned through a season that has seen the Crimson Tide take a loss to unranked Texas A&M and had scares against LSU, Arkansas and Florida.

While he hasn't exactly been a stand-up comedy act this season, his demeanor has veered from the intense, fiery persona Saban has projected in the past.

In his second season at Alabama, in 2008, the coach delivered a raging pregame locker room speech where he challenged his players to "go out and dominate the guy you're playing against and make his (fanny) quit." He looked and sounded like he was ready to line up alongside them and knock some heads.

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It wasn't so long ago that you could almost set your watch for a Saban rant designed to focus his team or rail against the "rat poison" of high praise that might make Alabama players complacent.

This year, that fuse really hasn't been lit.

Heck, a month ago – after the SEC Championship Game – he was saying how "the rat poison that you put out this week was yummy" after the media had questioned the Crimson Tide's chances against Georgia the first time around.

So what gives? Is Saban, at 70, taking his foot off the gas pedal? In his 15th year as Alabama's football coach, has he decided to take it easy?

I don't think so. 

Saban has explained that his positive, encouraging approach this season has had a lot to do with having a young team. Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Bryce Young is a sophomore, as is defensive star Will Anderson Jr. Many key players are in big roles for the first time. 

Saban has adopted a more nurturing way with this roster because he sensed this team might be more vulnerable, that players would respond better to sugar than vinegar. Instead of grousing or blustering after those close calls, he savored the victories and talked about his squad's competitive spirit. 

The evidence suggests this positive reinforcement has worked. Rather than show doubt after that near-disaster of an overtime win at Auburn, Alabama brushed it off and took apart Georgia – a team acclaimed as the nation's best for most of the season – to win a conference championship. By the time the Crimson Tide was playing Cincinnati in a playoff semifinal in the Cotton Bowl, it was self-assured and full of confidence.

But I still think there's more at play here than just a gambit by a cagey coach.

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Saban stood at a podium in Tuscaloosa upon his arrival in 2007 and issued a mission statement: "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 them; 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, I can't handle it.' That's the kind of football team we want."

Alabama has become not only the team nobody wants to play ("We Want Bama" chants have never come from the people who would actually have to step on the field against the Crimson Tide), it is the team everyone hates: college football's Evil Empire. Fans far and wide bemoan the fact that Alabama is a dominant force that can't be supplanted. As long as the dynasty continues, no one else has hope.

But in the past few years, the tone of that discussion has changed a bit. Those fans of opposing teams hate Alabama, but they have come to respect Saban. To some degree, they may even like him – or at least tolerate him as they would some inevitable force of nature.

That has come as Saban has let down his guard just a bit in public, laughed a bit and revealed his personality. They see how his players genuinely like him. They see he isn't a humorless football computer that happens to possess a human body.

Behind the scenes, it seems Saban is just as driven as ever. Pete Golding, Alabama's defensive coordinator, was asked point-blank in the past week whether his boss has been chewing out his assistant coaches at a less frequent pace this season.

"Absolutely not accurate," Golding reported.

So the fire is still there. We'll see it on the sidelines Monday night.

Perhaps Saban is smiling because he likes his team. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year after the 2020 national championship season, but here Alabama is again, playing for another trophy.

Maybe he's smiling because he's known all along that he was sitting on another championship team. Or it could be that he knows how many of these players will be back next year, and what kind of talent he will be bringing in to join them. 

Tommy Deas is Alabama sports editor for the USA TODAY Network and leader of the SEC coverage cross-team. Follow him on Twitter @tommydeas.