Questions swirled almost immediately after head coach Nick Saban announced his decision to retire after 17 seasons and six national titles at Alabama.
On Thursday, Saban publicly explained the reasoning behind his decision, saying he wanted to leave Alabama while the program was still in a good position to regularly compete for conference and national championships.
“The last few days have been hard,” Saban told ESPN in an interview Thursday. “But, look, it’s kind of like I told the players. I was going to go in there and ask them to get 100% 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.”
No program knows better the challenge of replacing a legendary coach than Alabama, which took more than two decades to find a comparable successor to Paul “Bear” Bryant after his retirement following the 1982 season. Alabama cycled through seven coaches before Saban’s arrival, starting with former Bryant player Ray Perkins.
All had at least one 10-win season, but only Gene Stallings (1990-96) won a national title, in 1992. The next one came under Saban in 2009, a 17-year drought that would be hard to swallow again for ‘Bama fans. Alabama won its last national championship in 2020.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Chantz Martin is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.
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