Nick Saban explains one driving factor in retirement decision

While the reveal was sudden, Nick Saban’s decision to retire from coaching didn’t happen overnight. As Alabama embarked on a journey to train and build for the 2024 season, Saban was pondering his own commitment to the endeavor.

And Saban’s own desire not to drag down the program he worked more than a decade and a half to build helped lead him to the difficult choice to walk away. Explaining his decision to ESPN, Saban shared that he’s happy to walk out on top, still.

“But look, it’s kind of like I told the players. I was going to go in there and ask them to get 100% committed to coming back and trying to win a championship,” Saban said, “but I’ve always said that I didn’t want to ride the program down, and I felt whether it was recruiting or hiring coaches, now that we have people leaving, the same old issue always sort of came up — how long are you going to do this for?”

But the clarity that he might not be as fully into the endeavor as he once was — and that it was time to go gracefully — didn’t make the departure easier for Saban.

“I wanted them to know how much they meant to me,” Saban said. “It was hard, all of it was. The last few days have been hard.”

Health factored into Saban’s decision, too

While he’s not facing any specific ailment or issue, some health concerns did play a factor in to Saban’s decision to call it quits.

“Last season was difficult for me from just a health standpoint, not necessarily having anything major wrong, but just being able to sustain and do things the way I want to do them, the way I’ve always done them,” Saban said.

“It just got a little bit harder,” he continued. “So you have to decide, ‘OK, this is sort of inevitable when you get to my age.’”

Saban went on to comment that the uncertainty ultimately helped him make the decision to hang it up for good rather than coach a few more years.

“Which I would have been happy to try to do,” says Saban. “But I just didn’t feel like I could do that and didn’t want to get into a year-to-year deal that doesn’t help anybody and doesn’t help you continue to build and be at the standard that I want to be at and want this program to be at.”