The Iron Bowl is always amongst the most important games of the season for Alabama, but even then adjustments need to be made to accommodate Thanksgiving.
Nick Saban and the Alabama staff are well aware that the team needs to give the players a chance to celebrate with family and friends during the holiday, so in order to keep things efficient Saban and company have come up with a plan every year to make sure everyone has a chance to enjoy.
“We move everything up an hour tomorrow so that the players that live in a two-hour radius – we’ll be done at 4:30-ish – and they got a chance to go home and have Thanksgiving with their family, and take other players if they want,” Saban said. “The coaches, including Miss Terry and I, have players who don’t have a place to go, we have them over our house. So I think we’ll have about 15 players at our house to join our family for Thanksgiving.
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“Then we come back and usually do one real after practice on Thursday, we don’t do that till Friday when players come back and then we have a Thanksgiving dinner for all the families, players and coaches alike on Friday, I think around noon. And then at one o’clock, we start the process of meetings and walk-throughs and things that we would normally have on Friday and get ready to travel and get ready to roll. So that’s kind of the adjustments that we make relative to Thanksgiving.”
Even in the heat of competition and with College Football Playoff implications on the line, Thanksgiving is still a time to show appreciation for all the fortunes one has in life.
“I know this is a great time of the year to have gratitude and give thanks for all the things that we have,” Saban said. “I know we all spend a lot of time thinking about the things that we want and maybe not appreciating the things that we have — relationships and all the other things in the world that we work hard to try to accomplish. Hopefully, everybody has an opportunity to do that and has an enjoyable and Happy Thanksgiving.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
