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Don’t get your hopes of Nick Saban returning to college football.
Rumors of the legendary coach’s potential comeback began earlier this week after former Alabama -Quarterback Greg Mcelroy said on his radio show that he was told by a source of Saban May Return in the future.
McElroy acknowledged he didn’t think it was true.
Days later, Saban’s daughter, Kristen, posted on her Instagram story a photo of her father who went on the field where he wrote it, “Damn, I miss this.”
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Head coach Nick Saban of Alabama Crimson Tide before a game against Auburn Tigers at Jordan-Hare Stadium November 25, 2023, in Auburn, ALA. (Michael Chang/Getty Images)
With the timing, fans thought it was a pre -shoot for a huge message.
It wasn’t.
“Apparently, some of you feel feeling of my last story about Nick’s walkout … He doesn’t come back to coaching, hate breaking it to you,” Kristen said in another post about his story via the New York Post. “You had your time.”
Saban surprisingly retired after the Collegiat season 2023-24, which ended in a Rose Bowl loss to any national champion Michigan Wolverines. And the payment-for-play landscape that College Sports has become seems to have played a role in his decision, even though he has denied it in previous interviews.
Alabama -Head coach Nick Saban speaks during the Southeastern Conference Media Day 19 July 2022 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
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“All the things I have believed in all these years – 50 years of coaching – no longer exist in College Athletics“Said Saban shortly after he retired.” It was always about developing players, was always about helping people get more success in life.
“My wife even said to me – we all have recruits over Sunday with their parents for breakfast. She would always meet with the mothers and talk about how to help influence their sons and how they would be well taken care of. She came to me just before I withdrew and said, ‘Why do we do it?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘All they love is how much you have to pay them.
“For me it was a kind of red alarm that we really create a circumstance here that is not beneficial to the young, and so I always did what I did. My dad did it, I did. So that’s why I always like college -athletics more than NFL because you had the opportunity to develop young people.”
Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban and offensive line coach Eric Wolford during a game against Mississippi rebels 12 November 2022 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Miss. (Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Saban has since joined ESPN’s “College Gameday” and has been fighting at Capitol Hill to regulate the name, image and equality (NIL).
He won seven national championships, the most ever of a main college football coach – one with LSU and six in Tuscaloosa.
