We had just come off a great win over Penn State in front of all their “whited-out” fans. It was an awesome feeling, but this week we had North Texas. People said this would be an easy game, that we could let off the gas a little bit, that we didn’t have much to worry about. Stuff like that.
But not our coaches, not Coach Saban.
Every week, no matter who we were playing, it was the biggest game of the year because, as Coach always said, “If you don’t win this one, the next one isn’t that important anymore.” It came down to who we were and what we wanted to accomplish. If we wanted to be the best team and the best players, why should it matter who we were playing? If we were planning on playing the best game of our lives, it shouldn’t matter who we were playing against.
Coach would always say that’s why Michael Jordan was the best and was so dominant, because he never played down to his competition. He always played his game and wasn’t affected by anything else, not the opponent or the crowd, nothing. He always played to his standard.
Our football team was made up of the little things like this. Whether it was taking off our cleats after practice before we came into the locker room, or tucking our shirt in during the workout so everyone was in uniform, it was always the little things. Even in the games, defensive end Damion Square would always say, “This game is going to come down to four or five plays, and you never know which plays they’re going to be, so you have to give everything you have on every single play.”
Stack up all the little things, and that’s where great things come from. Coach always told us that paying attention to detail would earn us tremendous results.
But it’s so hard to focus on the little things, especially in practice.
After a long day of studying and classes, we would start meetings every day at 2:00, then practice around 4:00. Practicing seemed monotonous to me early in my career, but I soon learned that practice was the reason we were so good. All we worked on in practice were the little things, developing good habits.
And when it’s all said and done, the majority of what we do is a direct result of the habits we’ve created for ourselves. Coach Saban instilled in each of us the habits of being a good football player.
After I started to realize this, I actually began to enjoy practice. I enjoyed the drills and the work I was putting in. I realized it was making me a great long snapper. I would go out and compete against myself every day, forcing myself to get better. I learned that you don’t stay the same — you either get better or you get worse. And if you think you’re staying the same, you’re probably getting worse. I focused on the little things as a snapper and worked toward getting a little bit better every day.
I also noticed that I could change the slightest thing in my technique and get tremendous results. If I wasn’t getting the spiral I needed on my snaps, I would just move my left thumb down maybe a half centimeter, and when I snapped the ball it would have a tight spiral as it zipped back there. I talked to Jeremy about his placekicking, and he said the same thing: he would make the smallest adjustments to how he kicked, and the ball would come out straighter and have much more consistency.
Little things. They make a huge difference.
Carson Tinker appears this Monday on LIFE TODAY. Excerpted from A Season to Remember: Faith in the Midst of the Storm by Carson Tinker. Copyright ©2014 by Carson Tinker with Tommy Ford. Published by B&H Publishing Group, Nashville, Tennessee. Reprinted and used by permission.
