Nick Saban seemed like he could go forever because he nearly did. He won an unprecedented seventh college football national championship at the age of 69, the second-oldest coach in history to win a title. He led his seventh Alabama team into the College Football Playoff at age 72, pushing eventual national champion Michigan into overtime. He kept kicking opponents’ asses until the very end, no letup in sight.
So the news arrived as a shock, if not a complete surprise, when it rippled through the sports world: the best college football coach ever to do it is retiring. There had been rumor and speculation for months that 2023 would be his last season, but still—very few people were ready for it to drop out of the clouds on a random January Wednesday afternoon.
And now there is a gaping hole in college football.
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Saban probably could continue to win big for years, adapting and modifying his approach to dominate in the turbulent modern era. He’d mastered the 21st century in all its iterations already: winning with defense at LSU and early at Alabama; shifting to more offense, more passing and more tempo in later years; figuring out the NIL Era to sign the No. 1 recruiting class in the nation as recently as last year.
But perhaps the all-consuming focus on driving his program toward excellence was simply too difficult to maintain much farther into his 70s. Perhaps his raging competitive ardor had waned just enough to allow him to walk away. Perhaps Miss Terry, his classy wife of 52 years, convinced him it’s time to enjoy life beyond football. Perhaps what’s coming next—massive realignment, a 12-team playoff, the potential for players to become bona fide employees—played into his decision.
Know this: the college sports brain drain has been immense in recent years. Multi-time national champions in football and basketball are checking out, from Roy Williams to Mike Krzyzewski to Jay Wright to Muffet McGraw to, now, Nick Saban. There are just two of them still coaching in football: two-time titleists Kirby Smart at Georgia and Dabo Swinney at Clemson, relatively young men at ages 49 and 54, respectively.
For Alabama fans and the Southeastern Conference as a whole, Saban’s retirement is a loss on par with Bear Bryant stepping down in 1982. It hits, it hurts and it will resonate.
Unlike Bryant, a drawling Arkansas native, Saban was not of the South, per se—but he became an inextricable and iconic part of it. A native of West Virginia whose playing and early coaching roots were in the upper Midwest, Saban proved emphatically that excellence travels. He developed just enough of a Southern accent, but his primary means of ingratiating himself below the Mason-Dixon Line was relentless winning.
Saban did not coach with a great degree of personal charm or folksiness. Smiles and one-liners were not part of his public-facing persona, though he articulated increasing affection for his players in his final seasons. He suffered no fools, with plenty of media members finding out the hard way how Saban felt about flippant questions. He was always insightful when moved to be—and sometimes quite witty—but most press conferences were serious endeavors.
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Of course, Saban also didn’t need to be Bobby Bowden or Lou Holtz to be popular at a school that views winning at football to be vitally important. For Alabama fans, Saban was perfect because he approached the job with every bit of the all-encompassing passion they had. A fan base that expected their head coach to be thinking about winning roughly 360 days a year got one who thought about it 365.
In an obsessive profession, Saban became the gold standard. A former Bill Belichick assistant, he had a Belichickian mien. He won titles without being overtly giddy, because it usually took about 15 minutes after the final gun for his mind to recalibrate toward the next task at hand. He largely left the celebrating to his players.
There was always something more to do in order to keep competitors at bay. He was the pontiff of “The Process,” the daily work necessary to cover all elements of success. The urge to be on top was surpassed only by the urge to stay on top.
Complacency was the enemy, the “rat poison,” the thing Saban refused to tolerate. That’s how you win a minimum of 10 games for 16 straight seasons. That’s how you go undefeated in the toughest conference in the country six times. And that endless dominance is why they rolled Toomer’s Corner in Auburn Wednesday, exhaled in Athens, whooped in Baton Rouge, hollered in College Station and rejoiced in Knoxville. The emperor of the SEC was finally going to give everyone else a chance.
For all of his excellence as a tactician (he’s the best defensive coach in college football history) and his prowess in recruiting, Saban had a greater strength: an ability to cultivate unquenchable competitiveness within a team. His Alabama teams elevated their immense talent by adding in zealous effort. They competed with a fury that was rarely matched and almost never exceeded.
That manifested itself in teams that punished physically and prepared mentally. The great Alabama teams lifted harder than their competition in the offseason, studied film more effectively, hit harder on game days and rarely allowed an inferior opponent a breath of hope. Saban demanded it, and his players rose to meet his expectations.
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On the rare occasions when the Crimson Tide were in for a real fight, Saban often tipped the balance in favor of his team with a bold in-game decision. A fake punt tipped the scales in a tie game against LSU in 2013. A fourth-quarter onside kick helped win the 2015 national championship game against Clemson. A willingness to bench starting quarterback Jalen Hurts in the 2017 title game, inserting a freshman named Tua Tagovailoa, was a daring stroke of genius.
But the real hallmark of Saban’s career—especially at Alabama—was a consistency that was able to withstand a dizzying turnover in players and coaches. The Tide annually has players ready to go pro as soon as allowed, after three seasons. The Tide annually has talented players who transfer because they don’t want to wait for their turn to rise up the crowded depth chart. The Tide lose assistants annually to plum jobs elsewhere.
From Smart at Georgia to Steve Sarkisian at Texas to Lane Kiffin at Mississippi to Mike Locksley at Maryland to Billy Napier at Florida to Brent Key at Georgia Tech to Charles Huff at Marshall—on and on and on—Saban assistants now populate the FBS head-coaching ranks. The Saban career rehab pipeline has been extraordinary, with Sark, Kiffin, Locksley, Butch Jones and others landing jobs in Tuscaloosa after being fired, then getting another chance after their stints at ‘Bama.
The tributes to Saban from those coaches will roll in for days to come. And from hundreds of former players. And god knows how many hundreds of thousands of fans. His impact will resonate in his absence.
The man himself cares little for fanfare, which is another reason why he went out this way. There certainly would be no Farewell Tour season from Nick Saban. But hopefully Alabama’s administration can cajole him into a send-off appearance at Bryant-Denny Stadium, which would be an unforgettable scene in program and state lore. He deserves to hear the roars one more time, and the fans deserve the chance to show their affection to the greatest coach there ever was in college football.
