Former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban, widely considered to be the best in the history of the sport, is the least surprising inductee in history to the College Football Hall of Fame this week.

Ahead of the induction ceremony on Tuesday, Saban reflected on his life and career, from growing up in West Virginia to reaching the pinnacle of the sport again and again before eventually retiring.

Despite it not being a shock to anyone himself included that he is being inducted, the gratitude for the life he’s lived and lessons he’s learned on and off the field was not lost on the legend.

“Little did I know as a kid growing up in West Virginia pumping gas at my dad’s service station that some of those lessons that I learned — it was beyond my imagination that I would ever end up here,” Saban said via Mike Rodak of Bama 247.

“Regardless of any responsibilities I was ever given as a kid, washing a car — if there were any streaks left on that navy blue Buick, you had to do it over. There was always a reckoning for what I did. That helped me tremendously, I think, from an accountability standpoint, because my dad used to always say, ‘If you don’t have the time to do it right the first time, how you going to find the time to do it again?’”

Thinking about his high school career, Nick Saban talked about what certainly sounded like how his legendary philosophy of never being satisfied began to form, and in true Coach Saban fashion, he credited his coaches and his parents for drilling that into him.

“We won an extraordinary amount of games when I was a PeeWee player and a high school player that culminated in a state championship. And after every one of those wins, I got my ass chewed out pretty good by my coaches and dad,” he said. “After all those wins, I finally asked my mom once, ‘Why do I always seem to get reprimanded even when we win?’ She said, ‘It’s not about winning. It’s about you being the best you can be.’ Those lessons helped me develop a process that helped a lot of other people be successful, helped us be successful and helped the people I worked with give us a chance to be successful. I’d like to thank them for that.”

It’s safe to say that fans in Tuscaloosa — who cheered Saban’s team on to six national titles in the greatest and longest run of success college football has ever seen — might just owe all of those memories to Saban’s parents and high school coaches.