How NIL and the 'transfer era' pushed Nick Saban into retirement

It sounds like Nick Saban knew well before his Jan. 10 announcement that he was retiring that his clock was starting to tick. Well before, in fact.

In a new in-depth report on ESPN, it was revealed that Saban had told Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne after the 2022 season that he felt he was nearing the end of his legendary coaching career.

"Greg, this is getting more and more difficult on me," Saban told Byrne, per ESPN's Chris Low. "I'm not ready to do it now, but we're going to have to start evaluating this more on a year-to-year basis."

Saban went on to coach for another season after that comment, but he was also very open about how he felt the sport of college football was changing for the worse.

There are, of course, NIL deals, which are allowing players to get millions of dollars in some cases. That change has been a long time coming. For the players, it has been a good change, but for coaches, it has created a "free agency" of sorts.

Schools now have to pay players enough to keep them. Coaches also have to almost guarantee players playing time or else they'll just enter the transfer portal and go elsewhere — and now they can do so basically without any repercussions to their eligibility.

Apparently those changes and the environment they created were weighing high on Saban after Alabama's Rose Bowl and CFP loss to Michigan this past season.

"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 explained. "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."

The college football world has sure changed, from NIL to the transfer portal, to conferences that no longer seem to have a limit for how large they will grow.

All of it seemingly led Saban to hang up his whistle, and in doing so nine SEC championships and seven national titles (six with Alabama) became the stuff of history and legends alongside him.