Nick Saban confirms he and Miss Terry are healthy, decision to retire was not due to an illness

When Nick Saban informed his Alabama players about his decision to retire, he cited his age and health concerns as factors. At 72 years old, he told ESPN’s Chris Low days that last 14 hours were “harder to navigate” than they were, say, 10 years ago.

That’s what Saban meant by “health concerns,” he told ESPN’s Rece Davis. Neither he nor Miss Terry are sick, and his decision to step away was because of his fading ability to bounce back from those long days.

“No illness,” Saban said. “Miss Terry’s fine, I’m fine. But it was the, can you sustain the season from just a mental grind standpoint? When I was young, I could work until 2 in the morning, get up at 6 and be there the next day and be full of energy and go for it. But when you get a little older, that gets a little tougher, and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that.”

Over the last few years, rumors and questions swirled about whether Nick Saban — widely considered the greatest coach of all time — would finally step away. As he said last week on The Pat McAfee Show, recruits wondered the same thing. They’d ask him if he’d be there for four years, and he’d turn the question around on them.

But, as Saban pointed out, he had some coaching staff vacancies. Most notably, he had to replace defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, who also announced his retirement this week. The candidates he interviewed also asked that question, and that’s when Saban decided it was time.

“My age started to be come a little bit of an issue,” said Saban, who turned 72 in October. “People wanted assurances that I would be here for three years, five years, whatever, and that got harder and harder for me to be honest about. And, to be honest, this last season was grueling. It was a real grind for us to come from where we started to where we got to. Took a little more out of me than usual.

“When people mentioned the health issue, it was really just the grind of, ‘Can you do this the way you want to do it? Can you do it the way you’ve always done it, and be able to sustain it and do it for the entire season?’ And if I couldn’t make a commitment to do that in the future, the way I think I have to do it, I thought maybe this was the right time, based on those two sets of circumstances. Like I said, there’s never a good time. But I thought maybe this was the right time.”