Nick Saban doesn't want Kalen DeBoer to think he's looking over his shoulder

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Nick Saban said he talks with new Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer “every now and then” and plans to meet new defensive coordinator Kane Wommack this week. 

Announcing his retirement last month, Saban will still be around the Alabama program, which is something publicly embraced when he was introduced as the Crimson Tide’s 28th head coach, but the former coach doesn’t want to be overbearing to the new coaches.

“I really haven’t been around,” said Saban on Monday night at the 2024 Nick Saban Legacy Award presentation at Red Mountain Theatre. “I really try to stay arm’s length. I don’t want anybody to think I’m looking over their shoulder. I think he’s hired a good staff. 

“I think he’s a good man, I think he’s a good coach and I think he’ll do a really good job.”

Saban spent the last 17 seasons as Alabama’s coach, leading the Tide to six national titles in nine championship game appearances. Considered by many as the best college football coach of all time, Saban decided to retire just nine days after Alabama’s 2023 season concluded.

A well-known creature of habit throughout his tenure in Tuscaloosa, Saban – in his first public comments since Jan. 10 – was asked about stepping back from his routine as a coach.

“I think that’s been the biggest thing, the relationships that you have with the people that you work with every day and the players that you have relationships with, you try to inspire and help them,” Saban told a small group of reporters. “That’s probably the thing I’ll miss the most.” 

One of the best recruiters the sport has ever seen, Saban helped Alabama sign the nation’s second-best class for the 2024 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Rankings. Only two high school players who signed with the Tide during the early signing period chose to transfer after Saban retired, bringing the complete player total to only 10 transfers after Jan. 10.

While the majority of Alabama’s class was signed when DeBoer took the job, it will serve as the first freshman class of his tenure this upcoming season. Saban’s first 2007 class was the No. 11 class in the country, per the industry comparison, and helped lay the foundation for a stellar run over the next 17 seasons. Although important, the two situations aren’t similar.

“This is a totally different era now,” Saban started. “We’d already signed 23-24 guys in the early signing period, but then the opportunity that those guys have to go someplace else and now you have to sort of re-recruit them, I think they did a really good job of that. 

Saban continued, “Managing the roster now is one of the most challenging things that you have to do, especially when you have a change like this. And this is not a normal change. Normally, when you have a change, it’s because the program is unsuccessful and you’re bringing in somebody to fix it. But this is kind of unprecedented in a way. I mean, they had to go through the same thing at Michigan this year when Jim Harbaugh went to the NFL.

“You have a successful program and you make a change, it’s a little bit different in terms of how you try to manage a roster, how do you keep continuity in the program with the players that you have and the guys that you recruited. And I think, all in all, they did a pretty good job of that.”

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