Gumbo for the Tiger Soul

Under Saban, the team was steadily improving, and expectations were rising. With an SEC Championship under our belts, was the next logical step a national championship? As Rodney Reed pointed out, 2002 was Saban’s third year and it could have been very different. “Coach Saban has subsequently admitted that, in the game against Florida, running a quarterback draw with Matt Mauck late in the game was a mistake. The game was well under control, and Mauck broke his foot on the play with less than 4 minutes left in a 36–7 route. Marcus Randall would step in the rest of the way. After starting out 6-1, we split the rest of the games, limping to the finish. We had a terrible loss at Arkansas and an underwhelming performance in the Cotton Bowl against the University of Texas which just wasn’t where we wanted to be as a team. Those were two terrible losses at the end of the season. After the season was over, the seniors got together in early January to lay out goals for the next season. Most of the time, the goals would be about winning championships, but this year we came up with a long-term vision for success. They would carry us through the spring, the summer training program, classes, and in everything we did on a daily basis. They were the kind of things that no one could take away from us, and that we could control. When I went to training camp with the Dolphins, Coach Saban used those same goals with the team, and when I recently visited the Alabama facilities, he is still using those same five goals that we came up with after we lost those last two games of the 2002 season.” That is where back-to-back losses at the end of the season turned out to be a good thing. The resolve demonstrated by the team leaders to build positive approaches to adversity provided the impetus for the 2003 championship season. These are the goals that the Leadership Council developed after the 2002 season and inspired the determination, passion and conviction that it took to win the national championship. They were goals that everyone on the team worked toward and couldn’t be taken away by the result of any single game. TEAM - Together Everyone Achieves More Positively Affect Teammates Every Day Responsibility to Yourself and Your Team Dominate Your Opponent Every Day Be a Champion After a five-year NFL career, Rudy Niswanger is now CEO of Joe Gears Co. in Monroe, LA. We spent a few minutes on the phone talking about various experiences leading up to the championship as well. Rudy reflected upon his recruitment out of Ouachita Christian High School in Monroe. He heaped high praise on Coaches Phil Elmasian and Derek Dooley for his recruiting process. Niswanger recapped his experience. “I redshirted my first year in 2001 and saw the field in 2002. The Blue Grass Miracle in 2002 was on my birthday, and I vividly remember Coach Jimbo Fischer giving us a great pep talk the night before. The offense and defense broke out into separate meetings for film review. When we got back together, Coach Fisher impressed upon us, ‘If you would have gotten a scholarship from Kentucky, you wouldn’t have gone to Kentucky. You’re at LSU, and we don’t lose to Kentucky.’ He kept repeating it over and over that we were at LSU, and we don’t lose to Kentucky. It was a great pep talk, and maybe that’s why we played hard for 60 minutes and won that game. I had become great friends with Ben Wilkerson as we had joined the team together the previous year. During the training camp practices, we would drink lots of water, so I was often at the urinal next to Ben. We were hot, miserable and sweating, but talking about our vision for the season. Looking ahead to January, we said to each other, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to be peeing next to each other at the Louisiana Superdome in January playing for the National Championship?’ We cast a vision for success and set our path for achieving it. Coach Saban spoke of the vision of winning a championship and kept repeating it over and over until we began believing it. We believed we were LSU, and LSU plays at the highest level. That standard of success was planted, and it is still there. Anything short of championship is a disappointment.”