The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (54 page)

Ansah was also getting worked into the ground by the coaches. He didn’t know how to hit a blocking dummy or drive a sled. He had no idea how to use his hands. Even basic drills were over his head.

Nor was he used to the physical demands. “He couldn’t make it through ten minutes of practice without taking a knee or lying down,” Mendenhall said. “The workouts were just too hard. He was so mentally weak, and the culture was so different. It was ludicrous to think he’d ever see the field. He couldn’t even get through the drills.”

Mendenhall kept waiting for Ansah to turn in his gear. “But he kept showing up,” Mendenhall said. “I was just like, ‘What are you doing? There’s no chance.’ ”

On the last day of fall camp, Ansah was still around. Mendenhall faced a decision. Under NCAA rules, Division I football programs are allowed a maximum of 105 roster spots. But schools are not allowed to offer more than 85 scholarships. That creates an opening for up to 20 walk-ons per team. Even though walk-ons pay their own tuition and are often relegated to the practice squad, those are coveted positions. Mendenhall decided to add Ansah to the roster.

In late October, BYU was preparing to play Wyoming. While going over practice film, Mendenhall and his staff noticed something odd on the kick returns. On every kickoff, Ziggy Ansah was barreling downfield, taking out blockers left and right. “He’s not only knocking them down,” said Mendenhall. “He’s ten yards in front of anyone else on our team.”

“Yeah, he’s ten yards ahead of everybody,” someone chimed in.

“Is everyone else tired?” one coach asked.

It was clear that wasn’t the case. Special teams players—even the ones on the practice squad—have the biggest motors. They go all out every play. Ziggy was consistently beating the most intense players on the roster.

“We gotta try him in a game,” one coach said.

Mendenhall wasn’t convinced. Practice is one thing. Games are another. Until two months earlier, Ansah had never touched a football. The idea of putting him on the field in a Division I game so soon seemed premature.

“It’s a huge leap,” Mendenhall said. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

But that Saturday BYU was up 16–10 at the half. Mendenhall decided to conduct an experiment. On the opening kickoff of the second half, Ziggy Ansah trotted onto a football field in a game situation for the first time in his life. “It was scary,” Ansah said. “I was trying to remember what I had been told, but it wasn’t easy, especially with a lot of people yelling.”

His instructions had been pretty simple. “We put him right in the middle of the field and said, ‘Whoever catches the ball, run right to that guy,’ ” Mendenhall recalled.

When the ball was kicked, Ansah raced downfield, taking out two Wyoming players. But he didn’t get near the return man. Convinced he had failed, he dropped his head and jogged back to the sideline. His teammates mobbed him. “Zig-gy, Zig-gy!” they shouted, slapping his helmet and butt.

“What?” Ansah said.

“You just blew up two guys,” players yelled.

Ansah shrugged.

After that, Ansah started to see more time on special teams.

But at the end of the season, Mendenhall told him there would not be a scholarship for him the following fall. He was welcome to remain on the team as a walk-on.

BYU opened the 2011 season on the road against its SEC foe Ole Miss. ESPN did the game. BYU’s offense had been stymied all day. With five minutes to play, Ole Miss had the ball and the lead, 13–7. Facing third and long, quarterback Zack Stoudt went into the shotgun. On the snap, Van Noy blew past the tackle and closed on Stoudt, swatting the ball loose while sacking him. Players converged on the loose ball. Van Noy popped to his feet, scooped up the ball and scampered into the end zone, tying the game. The Ole Miss crowd was silenced. With the extra point, BYU won 14–13.

Although just a sophomore, Van Noy had already established himself as the best all-around player on BYU’s defense. After the Ole Miss game, Mendenhall had news for him. He was getting a new roommate: Ziggy Ansah. From that moment forward, every time BYU traveled, Van Noy and Ansah would share a hotel room.

At the time, Ansah was racked with self-doubt. He was beginning to wonder if he’d ever figure out the game of football. Maybe he should not have tried out in the first place. Maybe he should quit. The whole culture was so foreign to him. It just seemed as if he’d never fit in.

On one level, Van Noy could relate. “Because of the things I’ve done and the experiences I’ve had, I’ve been pretty down in the dumps,” Van Noy said. “But because of those experiences I was capable of saying, ‘Hey, you’re not alone.’ Coming to BYU made me realize it is okay to ask for help.”

Pairing the team’s best player with its most inexperienced one proved to be a stroke of genius. Van Noy and Ansah became best friends. In their beds at night they’d discuss their fears and dreams. And Van Noy started teaching Ansah the finer points of the game—how to hit, how to leverage his size and speed and how to condition himself to improve his endurance.

“Kyle is like a brother to me,” Ansah said. “I love him. We watched a lot of film, and he taught me to stay low.”

Midway through the 2011 season, Mendenhall and his staff posed another question about Ansah: “Can he rush the passer on third down?”

He certainly had the speed and size. But he had zero technique. In practice one day they tried another experiment. With Van Noy lined up on the strong side, they lined up Ansah on the weak side, outside the tackle. Once again they gave very simple instructions: “Go get the quarterback.” He did just that, racing past the beefier tackle and recording a sack. The next time BYU was way up in a game, Ansah got to rush the passer on third down. Little by little, he was gaining confidence.

No one was happier for him than Van Noy. After the 2011 season, Ansah had one year of eligibility remaining. Following Van Noy’s lead, he had lived in the weight room, bulking up to 270 pounds. He had even gotten faster, especially laterally. His importance to the team as a situational player on defense was increasing.

Mendenhall had seen enough. He offered Ansah a scholarship for his senior season in 2012.

“It’s hard to even articulate how far this guy came,” Mendenhall said. “He was so naïve, so raw, when he walked on. But he worked and worked. He’s a statistics major. He’ll do exactly what you tell him after you tell him one time. He doesn’t know why he’s doing it. But he’ll do it.”

“Y
ou better play the seam a little better, guys!” he barked. “Eight yards outside the seam!”

The voice was insistent and seemingly everywhere at once. On the Wednesday of a bye week in early October 2012 before a game against Missouri, at the final practice before a three-day break, Nick Saban was in his element. A minor misread by junior linebacker C. J. Mosley and Saban jumped his ass. Defensive lineman Damion Square made a mistake only Saban seemed able to see. “Ninety-two! You’re doing the same thing every day!
Every day!
”

The Alabama practice stretched across three of the most pristine emerald-green fields that about $90 million in football revenue a year can buy. Rising nearby was a $9 million, thirty-seven-thousand-square-foot weight room and conditioning center complete with its own Performance Nutrition Bar, yet another of Saban’s cutting-edge, damn-the-cost improvements, the result, actually, of input from his player leadership council that a few years before had brought up the quality of the training table food.

“He values our opinion,” said Barrett Jones, a three-time all-American lineman.

Standing on the sidelines, NFL scouts from Houston and Tampa Bay watched as Saban, an old DB coach, went to work. He couldn’t stand still. He grabbed a football, licked the first two fingers of his right hand and tossed a series of perfect spirals that landed in the outstretched arms of defensive backs who ran like gazelles. The pace was frenetic. A two-hour symphony of whistles and shouts emitted by a small army of assistants and staff.

“Blow the horn! Blow the horn! Ones and twos over here,” yelled Saban.

First-team O against first-team D. Seven solid minutes of pad-popping intensity. Unlike most college football teams, the Tide practiced in pads
four days a week with no shortage of contact. At midfield Saban paced like a lion. Ten feet one way, ten feet back. Up on his toes. Dissecting every drill. Coaching at Indy 500 speed.

“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

At sixty-one,
this
is what got college football’s greatest coach up at 6:15 every morning and drove him through a ruthlessly efficient schedule devoted to an approach that is a visionary blend of old-school football and New Age philosophy. Simply known as The Process.

In some quarters of college football The Process is seen as nothing less than the New Testament of coaching. It was spread by former Saban assistants to Michigan State (Mark Dantonio), Florida (Will Muschamp), Florida State (Jimbo Fisher), Colorado State (Jim McElwain) and other schools. The Saban Way is an increasingly popular answer for coaches seeking a fresh path to the top of the mountain. It is the result of a continuing forty-year journey: small, careful steps away from cheap motivational tools like playing-time incentives and intimidation and inexorably toward the higher power of
expectation
built around three major components—personal development, academic development and football development—Saban has been preaching like gospel for years. His multilayered system within the system is fueled by phrases and words like “internal excellence,” “psychological disposition,” “mental energy” and “accountability.”

“You can talk about winning all you want,” he said, “but really the goal is for our guys to go out there … and play with the best of their ability from an effort standpoint, from a toughness standpoint and from a discipline-to-execute standpoint.”

Which from Saban’s standpoint was what The Process was all about: creating a team of individuals striving to be the best at what they do.

“Successful, to me,” he said, “is being all you can be at what you’re trying to do. You have a trend that you’re trying to develop with these habits so that people are doing the right things the right way at the right time so they have the best chance to be successful.

“You know you can put all that [winning] out of your mind if you just focus on being a relentless competitor, playing every play like it has a history and life of its own. Be the best player that you can be. That guarantees you the best result if you’ll just do it that way.”