Nick Saban shocked the college football world with his decision yesterday to inform the team he has decided to retire.
Many theories have been thrown around as to why Saban is choosing now to step away from the game, with many speculating that NIL and the transfer portal and the overall changing of the college football landscape are reasons Saban is stepping away.
But according to Saban himself in a Thursday morning interview with ESPN’s Chris Low, that is not the case, and that age and health concerns played more of a factor.
“Don’t make it about that. It’s not about that,” Saban said. “To me, if you choose to coach, you don’t need to be complaining about all that stuff. You need to adjust to it and adapt to it and do the best you can under the circumstances and not complain about it. Now, I think everybody is frustrated about it. We had an SEC conference call, 14 coaches on there [Wednesday], and 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.”
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“But this ain’t about that. We’ve been in this era for three years now, and we’ve adapted to it and won in this era, too. It’s just that I’ve always known when it would be time to turn it over to somebody else, and this is that time.”
Saban did cite health concerns, and said that things have gotten harder for him as he has gotten older. Last month, he had told ESPN that being 72-years old made the 14 hour days more difficult to get through than they had been. Nothing major was wrong with him, but things were just more difficult.
“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. It just got a little bit harder. So you have to decide, this is sort of inevitable when you get to my age.”
Alabama is still in the midst of the search for a new head coach as of early afternoon Thursday.
Michael Brauner is a Senior Sports Analyst and Contributing Writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @MBraunerWNSP
