Nick Saban went back to his office on Thursday, one day after he announced his retirement as Alabama’s head football coach.
While that’s likely a curious move for most, it’s business as usual for the 72-year-old Saban.
“I want to be there for the players, for the coaches, anything I can do to support them during this transition,” Saban told ESPN Thursday.
“There are a lot of things to clean up, to help as we move forward. I’m still going to have a presence here at the university in some form and trying to figure out all that and how it works. This is a place that will never be too far away from (wife) Miss Terry’s and my hearts.”
Saban said he settled on retirement following a trip last weekend.
“The last few days have been hard,” Saban said. “But look, it’s kind of like I told the players. I was going to go in there and ask them to get 100 percent committed to coming back and trying to win a championship, but I’ve always said that I didn’t want to ride the program down, and I felt whether it was recruiting or hiring coaches, now that we have people leaving, the same old issue always sort of came up — how long are you going to do this for?”
Saban won six of his seven national titles in his 17 years at Alabama, tying the school mark set by Bear Bryant. He finishes with a career mark of 297-71-1, 206 of those wins coming at Alabama (with 29 losses).
He led the Crimson Tide to nine Southeastern Conference championships.
–Field Level Media