When Nick Saban announced his retirement from coaching, it caught nearly everybody by surprise. In fact, he wasn’t even 100 percent sure of his decision before he announced it – and it wasn’t an easy one to make.
During a recent interview with ESPN, Nick Saban admitted that the hard truth about his decision to retire is that while he knew it was time for him to step away from coaching, he did not like the thought of how hard the timing would be on his players, assistant coaches and the program.
“I’m sitting there looking at the clock, talking to Ms. Terry, and you know you’ve got a team meeting coming up. I guess I still wasn’t 100 percent sure,” Saban said. “I thought it was the right time for us. I didn’t like how it would impact the program, the players, the coaches, the people in the organization, the university. That part of it was really hard. But it was inevitable that it was going to happen at some point in time, and I didn’t want to ride the program down.
“It was just the right time.”
Ultimately, there were some drawbacks from the decision as Alabama lost several players through the transfer portal and had to scramble to hire a new head coach. But as Saban said, he knew it was the right time.
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