Nick Saban is getting better with age, and the longtime Alabama Crimson Tide head coach recently joined the “Know Mercy” podcast with Stephen A. Smith to discuss retirement, and his plans for when to hang them up.
“I basically love what I do,” Saban told Smith during the interview. “I love the relationships with the players. I love trying to build a team with a group of people. That’s a lot of fun. I enjoy doing that. I am also very aware that I don’t want to ever ride the program down.
In other words, there’s going to come a time when my age and my circumstance — everybody is going to be able to tell somebody, ‘Well, he’s not going to be there. I mean, how long is he going to coach, until he’s 90?' That will start to affect the program maybe in an adverse way. I don’t want to get there.”
The 71-year-old will certainly not coach until he's 90, but he doesn't plan on leaving Alabama anytime soon.
“I don’t ever want to be in this position where I don’t feel like I’m making a positive contribution to the program, because I can still do the work at a quality level that is making a contribution to the success of the organization,” he explained.
“So, I’m not there yet. But all those things are factors that I would consider. Whenever the time comes — it hasn’t come yet, I enjoy doing what I’m doing.”
Smith asked Saban if he believes the highly successful coach is confident in his ability to compete with younger college coaches.
“I think better than ever,” Saban said. “I don’t think you can be successful if you can’t relate to the players, they don’t sort of trust and respect the principles and the values and the things you promote to help them be successful.
But I think that part of it — the human behavior part of it that we talk about to try to inspire people to accomplish the things that they want to accomplish — I think that gets better with age.”
Just like Alabama's Nick Saban has.
Follow Us
Subscribe