Corey Miller didn't know what to expect when he pulled up to Nick Saban's house for a party two years ago. His son, Christian, was in Tuscaloosa for an official visit at Alabama, and Saban and his wife, Terry, were hosting an event for the recruits' parents.
All Miller knew was that there was supposed to be karaoke.
"I remember there was a security guard at his house when we showed up, and I'm thinking, 'A karaoke party at Nick Saban's house? How much fun can that be?'" recalled Miller, a former linebacker with the New York Giants. "I was like a lot of people. You have this vision of Nick Saban that he's very serious and never smiles ... and then you see a whole different person."
Miller might have been expecting a football droid that night. What he got was John Travolta and a scene right out of "Saturday Night Fever."
"Let me tell you, Coach Saban is smooth, especially when he and Miss Terry get out there and start doing the electric slide with everybody," said Miller, who works now as a sports anchor for Fox 57 in Columbia, South Carolina. "He brings out that karaoke machine, and they crank it up. Everybody was singing and dancing. Coach [Burton] Burns was the DJ, and we're all out there sweating and getting down, and there's Coach Saban about 10 feet from you doing the same. It was a blast."
It's safe to say no one would be surprised to see the guy Saban will match wits with Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship Presented By AT&T (ESPN, 8:30 p.m. ET) on the dance floor.
By now, we've established that Clemson's Dabo Swinney is an elite football coach and a renowned dancer.
Dabo Swinney dances in the locker room after Clemson's victory over Florida State » https://t.co/nj5oTJymkd #FSUvsCLEM
— ESPN CollegeFootball (@ESPNCFB) November 8, 2015OK, maybe "renowned" is stretching it when describing Swinney's dancing prowess, but the guy loves to dance. He dances in the locker room after big wins. He dances on his boat while spending the day on the lake with his players. He is coaching's version of Fred Astaire, or for those with more modern tastes, Ne-Yo.
"Coach always has a new step, or we get him to try new steps," Clemson defensive end Shaq Lawson said. "That's just who he is, and he's not afraid to be who he is. That's what makes playing for him so much fun."
As the climactic game of the college football season approaches, it's difficult to imagine two more contrasting coaching styles than Swinney's theatrical, life-of-the-party approach and Saban's regimented, buttoned-up process.
Outwardly, at least.
But when you peel both guys back, and look a little deeper and remove their public personas, there are more similarities between the two than most would ever imagine. And to a degree, both have probably been miscast.
"Sometimes people get the misconception that Coach Saban is miserable, but he's really not," said former Outland Trophy winner Barrett Jones, who was a part of three national championship teams at Alabama under Saban and now plays in the NFL. "He just loves the grind. That's what he loves. Once you understand that about him, it's different. He enjoys getting in his office and watching film. He loves practice. He loves preparing his teams. But he's not always like that. He jokes around and loves to give guys a hard time. He definitely has a fun side to him that maybe everybody doesn't see."
And believe it or not, Saban is allegedly a much more accomplished dancer than he demonstrated with his halfhearted "T-Rex" following Alabama's victory over Michigan State in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic.
Not only does Nick Saban smile...he dances too! pic.twitter.com/Ewm0wwPtHe
— Justin King (@JustinKing) January 1, 2016"I really do have some moves. I didn't want to let them all out," joked Saban, who was admonished for his poor effort by his daughter, Kristen.
Miller will vouch for that, especially after seeing the coach get down to everything from Kool and the Gang to Journey to the Rev. Al Green. And that's a part of the reason Miller was so happy to see his son, who now is a redshirt freshman at Alabama, decide to play for Saban.
"I fell in love with who he really is, and that's why he gets the players he does," said Miller, who played at South Carolina. "I love the serious side. He loves to talk football and is always thinking about ways to get better. When it's about business, it's about business with Coach Saban. But he's not the stuffy person a lot of people think he is."
Interestingly enough, Saban and Swinney almost came to Alabama together in 2007 when Saban left the NFL to be the Crimson Tide's head coach. It was extremely tempting for Swinney to return to his alma mater. He had an opportunity to be Saban's co-offensive coordinator, passing game coordinator and receivers coach. But when Clemson added another year to Swinney's contract, he decided to stay at Clemson.
It was the right move, because a little more than a year and a half later, he was named Clemson's interim head coach after Tommy Bowden resigned midway through the 2008 season. And the interim tag was removed later that year.
Remember what an animated Swinney said when he was first introduced as the Tigers' full-time head coach?
"I've never failed at anything in my life," he beamed.
Well, that's Swinney in a nutshell: full of energy, full of life and full of confidence. And because he's so radiant about everything he does -- whether it's throwing pizza parties for 30,000 Clemson fans, coaching his kids' youth teams, throwing neighborhood Christmas parties or doing spot-on impersonations of his old college coach, Gene Stallings -- one of the misconceptions about Swinney is that he isn't as strong in the X's and O's department as some of his peers.
In retrospect, when you consider he has won 46 games over the past four years and beaten the likes of LSU, Oklahoma (twice) and Ohio State in bowl games, the notion that Swinney would take a back seat to anybody in terms of coaching acumen seems absurd.
But labels have a way of sticking, even when they don't belong.
Woody McCorvey, Clemson's associate athletic director of football administration, has known Swinney since the Clemson coach was a sophomore at Alabama and trying to earn his keep as a walk-on receiver. McCorvey started as Swinney's position coach, and later on, Swinney coached receivers under McCorvey when McCorvey was Alabama's offensive coordinator.
"A lot of people don't look at him as an X's and O's guy because of the passion and all that he shows," McCorvey said. "Dabo's going to be out there in the community. He doesn't mind going in a grocery store. He enjoys reaching out and touching people, and they can reach out and touch him. That's not necessarily how it is with a lot of head coaches.
"I think the other thing is that he was never a coordinator before he became a head coach. That's probably where the stigma comes from, but it's completely wrong."
McCorvey said he never coached anyone who kept more detailed notes in player meetings than Swinney.
"It was almost as if he had the whole playbook written down," McCorvey said. "I found out later on after he got into coaching that his philosophy was that if he wrote it down, he felt he learned it better. He always had a reference to go back to, and that carries over today to our staff meetings. He has an unbelievable memory."
When McCorvey was calling plays for Alabama, he said Swinney was his right-hand man.
"He was always seeing something or would come up with a bunch of good ideas that week in the game plan that would come through for us on Saturdays," McCorvey said. "You see him now involved in every facet of the game. He's bouncing around on the practice field with the offense, defense and special teams, making suggestions, coaching, giving insight.
"Every year, he's become a more complete head coach, and one of the biggest things he's had an impact on now is substituting personnel and watching the flow of the game and knowing when we need to switch personnel on offense, defense or special teams."
Swinney's upbringing and the way he had to scratch and claw for everything he got at Alabama is one of the reasons he's so unwilling to give up on players. That doesn't mean he's soft. He sent three players home from the Capital One Orange Bowl, including key freshman receiver Deon Cain, and reiterated afterward that Clemson was bigger than any one player.
But McCorvey points to Falcons 2015 first-round pick Vic Beasley and the way Swinney stuck with him as a testament to Swinney's patience and feel for reading players.
"Beasley stays around here for a few years and doesn't do much," McCorvey recalled. "Then in Year 4, he blossoms, and in Year 5, he's the eighth pick in the draft. It was similar with (Falcons rookie DT) Grady Jarrett. Nobody really wanted him in recruiting, and a lot of people on our staff questioned whether we should take him, but Dabo saw something in him. I remember him saying, 'We're taking him. I like what he stands for,' and look at the player [Jarrett] has become.
"The big thing is these kids see how genuine Dabo is. Right from the beginning, they see that it's not an act."
One of the first things Swinney tells younger coaches is that they need to be themselves above all else. It certainly has worked for him, even though earlier in his career critics wondered if he was more clown prince than football coach.
"What works for me may not work for you," Swinney said. "I can tell them specific things about the business, but you have to be who you are. If a coach has been successful, I can study him, but I can't be him. At the end of the day, you have to stay within your personality and what you believe in. I don't think there's any question that players know quickly when you don't know what the heck you're talking about or trying to be someone you're not.
"I know I'd be pretty bad at trying to be somebody else."
The same goes for Saban, who has been known to go on rants and berate reporters during news conferences and then concede later on two things: His wife tells him to smile a lot more in those settings; and most of the time, he's simply trying to send a message to his team, the fans or even the college football establishment.
"I know people think I don't enjoy a lot of the things that go along with coaching," Saban said. "I may not show it to everybody, and maybe I don't show it enough, period, but I get a tremendous amount of self-gratification out of what I do. I have no idea what I would be doing if I weren't coaching, but I guess we all have a way that works for us."
Oddly enough, the fact that Saban never seems completely relaxed during football season is what appeals to his players. It's one of the reasons the Alabama program has been able to deal with monstrous expectations that only seem to swell each year, if that's possible.
A fourth national championship in seven years will be at stake on Monday night in Glendale, Arizona, and nobody needs to tell the Alabama players how a runner-up finish would play in Tuscaloosa.
"The thing with Coach Saban is that he knows when to turn it on and when to turn it off," Alabama middle linebacker Reggie Ragland said. "A lot of people don't see coach's goofy or sensitive side because he's always focused in and doing his job. He's always pushing for more, pushing us to be better, and that's why you come here.
"He's always in it, hoarse and all. He's going to throw his hat or something to let you know, and he's always going to be that way until he decides he can't go anymore. That doesn't mean he's not fun. It just means he's a winner and wants us to be winners in everything we do."
And whether they're coaching (or dancing), Saban and Swinney have shown that there's more than just one way to win.