Laser-focused on winning as college football's most successful coach, Nick Saban rarely details his personal life, particularly those early years outside Marion County in Monongah, West Virginia.

But when a window of opportunity is there to share stories of the past, the six-time national champion never disappoints.

Saban respected his father, Nick Saban Sr., a hard-working man who owned a Gulf gas station and showed his son what it took to provide for a family. Saban recalls wanting to impress his father as a child and says a bad grade in music class was the original shift point in knowing education would lead to a better life, one possibly involving sports.

Saban retold the story to ESPN's Marty Smith in an excerpt from Smith's new book, "Never Settle: Sports, Family, and the American Soul", an in-depth memoir due to release on Aug. 6. Saban first mentioned his memorable interaction with "Ms. Helminsky" ahead of Alabama's national championship showdown vs. Georgia in 2018.

"Ms. Helminsky was my music teacher, and if it wasn't for her, I might not have been successful in life," Saban said during media day in Atlanta."Because she gave me a D in music when I wouldn't get up and sing, because I was shy. And my dad made me turn my basketball uniform in for getting a D.

"And he took me to the coal mines in West Virginia, and we went down 527 feet, and he said, 'This is where you're going to end up if you don't get an education.' So I made up my mind after that, that I'm going to do better in school."

Saban went on to prioritize family, school and sports as a teenager before playing football at Kent State under coach Don James. That's where he began his coaching career as a graduate assistant in 1973 before earning his first head coaching gig at Toledo in 1990.

The dialogue below is from Marty Smith's first interaction with Saban, who detailed his love for his father and introduction to football after recalling countless trips to West Virginia football games as a child:

"I don't remember those football games . . ." He paused, looking straight ahead out the windshield, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb. "But I remember that time with my dad." Nick Sr. died when Coach Saban was twenty-two years old. For his entire life, he wanted nothing more than to make his father proud.

This nugget from Saban shows the impact Nick Sr. had on his son, an unbreakable bond that has stood the test of time.

Saban enters the 2019 season one national championship shy of passing Paul 'Bear' Bryant for most all-time. Saban's "Process" has been the rocket fuel behind one of the most illustrious decade-long in college football history, a stretch of success that would've made his father proud.