Nicholas Lou Saban Research Paper

Nicholas Lou Saban Jr. was born on October 31, 1951 in Monongah, West Virginia. As a child Nick had a dad who didn’t want anything short of perfection from Nick. He started working at his dad’s gas station when he was eleven years old. Big Nick, who was Nick Saban’s dad, got the idea to start a Pop Warner football team. He liked the idea of providing small town boys with an activity that would keep them busy and build character. By the summer of 1962 they had enough boys to form a team. They were named the Black Diamonds. He soon discovered that he loved coaching football and he was good at it. In their first season they only recorded one win, but they quickly improved to 5-5 the next season. In their third season the Black Diamonds started

He was especially tough on Nick though. By their third season he had turned a group of rookies into a real football team. In their third season they went undefeated and unscored upon. After that season they went on 39 game win streak. This team would spark Nick Saban’s love for the game of football.

In his sophomore year Saban made the Monongah high school football team. He was their starting quarterback. The team won 8 games, lost one game, and tied one. In Saban’s junior year he led the team to the Class AA state championship game, but they lost badly. However, the next year he led the team to a Class A state championship which they won.

For college he decided to go Kent State. He played football for them. In the finals weeks of his freshman year the students had been protesting about President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia which contradicted his pledge to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. One rally was going to happen on May 4, 1970. The protestors threw rocks at the Ohio National Guard who were trying to stop the protest. Soon, the guardsmen started shooting. Four people died and nine were wounded.

Saban knew he wasn’t going to get drafted, and his girlfriend, who later became his wife, still had one more year of college, so he decided to stay at Kent State as a graduate assistant