During his recent appearance on "The Pivot Podcast" with Ryan Clark and Channing Crowder, former Alabama football coach Nick Saban discussed the challenges of his final season at Alabama and why it ultimately pushed him into retirement.

Saban revealed that he thought his final season was going to "kill" him, citing it as "one of the hardest years" he went through as a coach.

"That was one of the hardest years I ever went through as a coach," Saban said. "Because we started out really bad and got better as we went, because we had kind of a younger team and the quarterback got a lot better. It was just a really, really hard year. Probably didn't have maybe as good of staff as some of the ones before, so I felt like I had to do more."

In his 17th and final season at Alabama, many would consider it the best coaching job of his career. After losing the second game of the season to Texas, he took a struggling team and quarterback and coached them to an SEC Championship before their season came to an end with a loss to Michigan in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoffs. Shortly after, the legendary coach, with seven national championships to his name, announced his retirement at the age of 72.

Some felt that NIL (name, image, likeness) and the transfer portal were the cause of Saban's decision to retire, but Saban said that was not the case. His actual reason for retirement was his fear of his work ethic killing him. Being the first one in and the last one out every day because that's the only way he knows how to coach takes a toll on a 72-year-old.

"I honestly felt at the end of the year, like, 'You're going to kill yourself doing this.' I really did feel that way. It wasn't name, image and likeness. It wasn't the changes of college football. It wasn't the players. No issues with any of that. I just really felt like, 'If you keep working like this, you're gonna kill yourself.'…Some people don't work as hard. Some people don't stay until late at night. But that's how I learned how to do it. That's the only way I know how to do it. But once you get a little older, it gets harder to do it that way," he explained.

When pressed by podcast host Channing Crowder, a former player of Saban's with the Miami Dolphins, if he would ever coach again, Saban replied, "I don't think so."

Saban now feeds his football appetite as a contributor on ESPN "College Gameday" as well as NFL Draft coverage.

"I'll bet you if you asked me that question and I wasn't involved in sports — ESPN, GameDay, doing the draft — I'd probably say, 'Maybe,'" Nick Saban said on ever coaching again. "But doing this, I'm still involved in ball. I like it and it gives me something to do. I don't think I'd be happy if I didn't have something to do."

Watch the full interview here.

Don't miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.

JH Outback Fishers Farm730 CMP Article Bottom