By all indications, Alabama coach Nick Saban is a physically fit individual. If you didn’t know how old he was, you would have trouble guessing 61 just by looking at him. While that is not surprising considering he is the best coach in college football, it becomes a bit more puzzling when you hear about part of his dietary routine.
GQ magazine writer Warren St. John followed Saban around recently for a lengthy profile that will be published next month. One of the more interesting revelations in the piece is that Saban eats the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. The breakfast part is pretty hilarious.
Saban is a fit 61, owing in part to regular pickup basketball games with staff, a frenetic pace on and off the field, and a peculiarly regimented diet. He doesn’t drink. For breakfast, he eats two Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies; for lunch, a salad of iceberg lettuce, turkey, and tomatoes. The regular menu, he says, saves him the time of deciding what to eat each day, and speaks to a broader tendency to habituate his behaviors.
I don’t know what’s funnier — the fact that Saban eats Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies every day or his reason for doing it. The average person probably spends no more than a few minutes figuring out what they want for breakfast and lunch, but in the life of Saban that’s valuable time that can’t be wasted.
Saban also admitted that the “Satan” persona the fans and media have created for him over the years has bothered him.
“It used to upset me,” he says. “I would come and say to my wife, ‘I’m not like that at all. Why do these guys say I’m that way?’ And she would say, ‘You ever watch yourself in a press conference?’ You can blame the other guy for saying it, or you can look at yourself and say, ‘I must have contributed to this.'”
We can attest to that. Saban has a reputation for running an incredibly tight ship, which is why his teams have won three of the last four national championships. However, Satan would never eat Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. Now that we know Saban does, we can probably ditch the nickname.
H/T Dr. Saturday
