Mount Vernon High School

January 12, 2024 It Takes What It Takes University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban announced his retirement this week, bringing to an end a historic run of coaching success. Saban won a record seven national championships - including six in the 12 years he spent leading the Crimson Tide - and created a culture of winning performance and a standard of excellence that set his program apart. One of the key components of Saban's winning culture was discipline. Discipline can be defined a number of ways, but to me it's simply the ability to do what success requires you to do, regardless of and maybe even in spite of how it feels. Coach Saban talked about discipline. He emphasized it. He demanded it, from himself and from everyone who was a part of his program, on a daily basis. One of his most famous sound bites on the topic came from a 2015 press conference, where he spoke about the what he called “the illusion of choice.” “They (young players) all think they have this illusion of choice. Like, I can do whatever I want to do. And you kind of have this younger generation now that doesn’t always get told no. They don’t always get told this is exactly how you need to do it. So they have this illusion that they have all these choices. “But the fact of the matter is, if you want to be good, you really don’t have a lot of choices, because it takes what it takes. You have to do what you have to do to be successful, so you have to make choices and decisions to have the discipline and focus to the process of what you need to do to accomplish your goals.” Coach Saban’s words may have been directed at members of his Alabama football team, but they are true for each of us here today, too. They highlight the reason why - if we're serious about becoming our best and serious about winning in any important area of life - discipline is so important. Despite what we want or what we can sometimes convince ourselves to believe, it’s a narrow road that leads to success, and it’s our discipline that determines whether or not we stay on it. That "illusion" Saban referenced is the voice that convinces us that it’s supposed to be easy. It tells us that we’re supposed to get everything we want or everything we think we are entitled to. It justifies that taking today off doesn’t really matter because, after all, it’s just one day. And besides, it's unlikely anyone will even notice. That voice convinces us that who we currently are and how we’re currently built is good enough to achieve the success we say we’re after, and that somehow our lack of discipline won’t keep us from going where it is we want to go. But what is an illusion, really? It's a lie. A trick. A deception. It’s easy for any of us to get seduced by the comfort and convenience of the easy path. But the truth is, doing something meaningful and important isn’t supposed to be easy. The truth is, we don’t get everything we want or everything we think we are entitled to. The truth is, earning new levels of success requires us to work harder, get tougher, and be better than we currently are. The truth is, we have to do what success requires us to do, regardless of and maybe even in spite of how it feels, because if we really want to win, then that’s really the only option we’ve got. Maybe the illusion for you today is that discipline is a quality that some people possess, and that you just aren’t one of them. But the truth is, discipline is something each of us can build if we want to. It's like a muscle. With effort, it can be strengthened and developed. Putting discipline to work might hurt some initially, but the more you choose the way of the champion, the stronger and more powerful it becomes. That’s what Nick Saban taught his players, and what he's helping to teach us here today, too…that if we want to be someone worthy of winning, then the road is narrow and the choices are few, because it takes what it takes. -Travis