Nick Saban on impact NIL played in retirement: 'It's not about that'

The hurdles that come with college athletics today are some that a few coaches have grown tired of leaping over. However, Nick Saban says they are not the reason why, as of Wednesday, he decided to call it a career.

Saban addressed his retirement during an interview with Chris Low at ESPN. Of all the reasons that he chose to move on from coaching, he made it clear that aspects such as name, image, and likeness or like the transfer portal aren’t part of that decision.

“Don’t make it about that. It’s not about that,” said Saban.

“To me, if you choose to coach, you don’t need to be complaining about all that stuff,” Saban said. “You need to adjust to it and adapt to it and do the best you can under the circumstances and not complain about it.”

However, to be clear, Saban didn’t say they are perfect systems either. He isn’t leaving his career behind because of them. Even so, he also isn’t letting the genuine irritations that he and other colleagues have experienced with them go forgotten.

“Now, I think everybody is frustrated about it,” said Saban. “We had an SEC conference call, 14 coaches on there (on Wednesday). There’s not one guy you can talk to who really understands what’s happening in college football and thinks that it’s not an issue.

A lot changed over Saban’s final few seasons on the sidelines at Alabama. Coming off a pandemic in a season where he won what turned out to be his final title, practices like the portal and NIL became commonplace in every program in the sport. Whether they were pros or cons to Alabama over that time, the fact of the matter is they were prevalent in every sense.

Still, regardless of their impact, Saban swears that they’re not the reasons he’s retiring. He just knows that, at this point in his life, it’s time for him to move on from coaching.

“This ain’t about that,” said Saban.

“We’ve been in this era for three years now and we’ve adapted to it and won in this era too,” Saban said. “It’s just that I’ve always known when it would be time to turn it over to somebody else. This is that time.”

Saban explains one driving factor in retirement decision

Nick Saban’s decision to retire from coaching didn’t happen overnight.

As Alabama embarked on a journey toward the 2024 season, Saban was pondering his own commitment to the endeavor. Saban’s own desire not to drag down the program he worked to build helped led him to the difficult choice. Explaining his decision to ESPN, Saban shared that he’s happy to walk out on top still.

“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?”

“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.”