Nick Saban explains why he decided to retire as Alabama head football coach

One day after Nick Saban suddenly retired as Alabama head coach, the seven-time national championship winner detailed why he decided to step away from the position.

Speaking to ESPN, Saban said he informed his players and staff of his decision to retire at 4 p.m. Wednesday meeting. He emphasized it was important for those in the program to hear the news from him first. Saban said the announcement was difficult, but he thought about how he would be asking everyone to give 100% to win a championship, and how it gotten harder to do the same, questioning "how long are you going to do this for?"

Ultimately, the 72-year-old said his age was making it harder for him to do the job he had done for the past 17 seasons.

"Last season was difficult for me from just a health standpoint, not necessarily having anything major wrong, but just being able to sustain and do things the way I want to do them, the way I've always done them," he said. "It just got a little bit harder. So you have to decide, 'OK, this is sort of inevitable when you get to my age.'"

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Saban added it would be unfair to tell people he would be at Alabama for four-to-five more years, and have constant questions about whether he would step away at the end of each following season.

"Which I would have been happy to try to do, but I just didn't feel like I could do that and didn't want to get into a year-to-year deal that doesn't help anybody and doesn't help you continue to build and be at the standard that I want to be at and want this program to be at," Saban said.

Saban also shot down any belief the changing landscape of college football, like NIL, was behind his reasoning for leaving the job.

"Don't make it about that. It's not about that," Saban said. "To me, if you choose to coach, you don't need to be complaining about all that stuff. You need to adjust to it and adapt to it and do the best you can under the circumstances and not complain about it. Now, I think everybody is frustrated about it.

"But it ain't about that. We've been in this era for three years now, and we've adapted to it and won in this era, too. It's just that I've always known when it would be time to turn it over to somebody else, and this is that time."

Even though he's no longer head coach, Saban said he is "always going to be here for Alabama however they need me," as the school attempts to find his replacement, but there's a lot he wants to do with his life with his retirement.