Since he decided to retire from coaching earlier this year, legendary Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban has become outspoken in his stance against the NCAA’s current name, image, and likeness rules. But he recently set the record straight that those rules were not the reason why he retired.
Though Nick Saban is not a fan of the current NIL rules, he recently made it clear during an interview with Bret Baierthat of Fox News he did not retire because of them.
“No, not at all,” Saban said when asked if NIL was the reason he retired, according to On3. “I just never wanted to see the program go down, and I felt whether it was recruiting or hiring coaches and people wanting to know how long you’re going to be there. And when you get to 72 years old, it gets harder and harder to promise people you’re gonna be there for four or five more years.
“I loved coaching. We adapted well to the system. At Alabama, we were one of the ‘haves’ in this new, current system even though I see some serious problems with it moving forward in the future.”
It seems like Saban’s decision came down more to his age than the state of college football.
[On3]
