5th Annual Team Focus Fundraiser Huge Success

Alabama coach Nick Saban is proud of a lot of things his 2011 Crimson Tide accomplished.

He's proud of the national championship they clinched with a 21-0 victory over LSU in the BCS title game. He's proud of the Disney Spirit Award they won for their community service after the tornadoes last April. He's proud of the SEC-high 38 players who made the SEC academic honor roll.

At the top of that list, Saban told a packed ballroom at the Mobile Convention Center on Monday night, was how the Tide responded to adversity.

"The thing that I was most proud of with this team was how they handled losing to LSU the first time," Saban said in his keybnote address at "An Evening of College Football with Nick Saban," a benefit for Team Focus. "We had a team meeting and we showed them all the plays and how the outcome of the game was completely controlled by what they did. . . . They were all convinced when they left the room that the better team really didn't win the game.

 "As big as that game was made out to be, they very easily could have changed what they had committed themselves to accomplish and thought they didn't have a chance to accomplish it. They never did that."

Saban told the audience that the Crimson Tide's preparation for its rematch with LSU was "almost a perfect storm," including an inspirational speech the week before the game from motivational speaker Kevin Elko and a private viewing of the movie "Red Tails" nearly two weeks before it was scheduled to be released.

Saban said he called director George Lucas to request the viewing and Lucas relented on one condition: "You've got to say something about it after the game."

In a meeting with media members before Monday's event, Saban said he believes this year's Alabama team has a better mindset toward defending its title than the 2010 squad, which finished 10-3 a year after the Tide won the national crown in 2009.

"Maybe there's enough guys on this team who experienced that a few years ago," he said. "Because the most important thing about your team is that your team improves. We're not where we need to be. We have to work to improve."

 Five members of Alabama's 2011 national championship team will be in New York on Thursday as potential first-round selections in the NFL draft, and Saban said Monday he plans to be there with them.

"This will be nine guys in the last two years if five guys do go in the first round," he said. "I think it's a tribute to the quality of players we've been able to attract, but also the great job our entire staff has done in helping develop these players."

Monday night, however, was about supporting Team Focus, a Mobile-based organization founded by former Pitt coach and ESPN analyst Mike Gottfried and his wife Mickey to provide positive male role models to fatherless boys.

Two boys in the program told the audience about the positive effect Team Focus has had in their lives, and Gottfied shared the stories of several others who have gone on to college or careers in the military.

Saban, whose father founded a youth football league in his West Virginia hometown, and Crimson Tide radio announcer Eli Gold, whose own father died when he was a young boy, praised the program and the work the Gottfrieds are doing.

"If you're going to be a good leader," Saban said, "you've got to have vision, you've got to have a plan, you've got to set a really good example for other people, you've got to hold people accountable, and you have to have some very defined principles in your organization so everybody can be accountable to them.

"The last thing you have got to do to be a good leader is, you have to serve other people. ... This guy over here (Gottfried) is a great leader in your community. He's doing great things. Please support him."

 Mike Herndon, Press-Register