The Alabama football team ended their season with a loss to Michigan football in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Rose Bowl a couple months ago. Little did we know that it would be the last time we saw Nick Saban lead the Crimson Tide into battle. Saban shockingly retired after the college football season concluded. Kalen DeBoer is now the new head coach of Alabama.
Not many people were expecting Nick Saban to retire from coaching after Alabama football lost in the Rose Bowl. He has been doing this for a long time, but he wasn't showing any signs of slowing down, and this past season was one of the best coaching jobs that he's ever done.
“We weren't a very good team those first few weeks of the season, but it's a credit to those kids how far they came,” Nick Saban said, according to an article from ESPN. “I'm not sure I've had a team that improved more over the course of the season.”
When Saban announced that he would no longer be the Alabama head coach, everyone started to think of why he was retiring? Was it because of the loss to Michigan in the Rose Bowl? No, but Saban certainly wasn't happy with how his team went out.
“I want to be clear that wasn't the reason, but some of those events certainly contributed,” Saban said in regards to his decision to retire. “I was really disappointed in the way that the players acted after the game. You gotta win with class. You gotta lose with class. We had our opportunities to win the game and we didn't do it, and then showing your a** and being frustrated and throwing helmets and doing that stuff … that's not who we are and what we've promoted in our program.”
Once Saban got back to campus after the Rose Bowl, it became more clear that it was time for him to move on. The game is clearly changing, and it sounds like he wasn't too thrilled about what his Alabama football team was focused on when the offseason hit.
“I thought we could have a hell of a team next year, and then maybe 70 or 80 percent of the players you talk to, all they want to know is two things: What assurances do I have that I'm going to play because they're thinking about transferring, and how much are you going to pay me?” Saban said. “Our program here was always built on how much value can we create for your future and your personal development, academic success in graduating and developing an NFL career on the field. So I'm saying to myself, ‘Maybe this doesn't work anymore, that the goals and aspirations are just different and that it's all about how much money can I make as a college player?' I'm not saying that's bad. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying that's never been what we were all about, and it's not why we had success through the years.”
Nick Saban started coaching Alabama a long time ago, and he had been coaching the college game well before that as well. The changes that have happened to the game since then are monumental, and there are things that Saban isn't used to.
“People wanted assurances that I was going to be here for three or four years, and it became harder to make those assurances,” Saban said. “But the thing I loved about coaching the most was the relationships that you had with players, and those things didn't seem to have the same meaning as they once did.”
At the end of the day, Saban knew that there was never a good time for this to happen, but he ended up realizing that it was the right time to move on from Alabama.
“I'm sitting there looking at the clock, talking to Ms. Terry, and you know you've got a team meeting coming up,” Saban said. “I guess I still wasn't 100 percent sure. 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.”
Saban's time with the Alabama football program is now done, and it is now in the hands of Kalen DeBoer. It's going to be weird to see the Crimson Tide with another coach, but the entire program seems confident with their new leader.
Follow Us
Subscribe