Saban Shoots Down Retirement Speculation, Says New Challenges Keep Him Going

The Alabama coach sounds uninterested in calling it quits anytime soon.

As he continues to grow older and rack up national championships, Nick Saban has also been on the receiving end of numerous questions about his future retirement plans.

But in a recent viral video, the 70-year-old Alabama football coach made it sound like he has no intentions of walking away from the game anytime soon. 

Speaking to the Alabama Football Coaches Association on Jan. 27, Saban questioned why he would retire from coaching in a since-deleted video clip that was posted Monday to Twitter. He explained that the challenges that face his Crimson Tide and the sport as a whole continue to fuel his fire, even after almost five decades in the profession.

“Everybody asks me when I wanna retire. Retire from what?” Saban said to a crowd of coaches in Montgomery, Ala., according to Charlie Potter of 247Sports. “I’m gonna jump into an empty abyss, aight, of what am I going to do? Because the very challenges that I talk about and the things in our profession that concern me – for you and for me both, in your game and our game – that’s what keeps me going. That’s why I get up every day. That’s why I can’t sleep at night sometimes.

“So why would you quit doing that? I haven’t figured that one out yet.”

The remarks echo a similar sentiment to one that Saban expressed just before his 70th birthday last October when he reiterated that he has no timetable for retirement during a weekly SEC coaches teleconference, according to AL.com.

Saban‘s Crimson Tide are fresh off another appearance in the national championship game, where they lost to the Bulldogs. Alabama is just a season removed from winning the national title in 2020, which marked the sixth championship that Saban has won during his 15 years at the helm in Tuscaloosa.

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