Nick Saban asked if Protect College Sports Act makes him interested in coaching again
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Nick Saban stunned the college football world in January 2024 when he announced his decision to retire. There has been plenty of speculation that Saban’s decision was driven by the state of college football with unlimited transfers and NIL running wild.
Saban has been a vocal advocate of the Protect College Sports Act, a federal law addressing some of the biggest issues in college sports. Following the bill’s passing in the US Senate on Tuesday morning, Saban was a guest on ESPN’s Get Up to talk about the news out of Washington, D.C.
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Host Mike Greenberg asked Saban if the development would make him interested in returning to coaching. Saban clarified that NIL wasn’t what drove him to retirement, and that he has different priorities right now.
“We had three years of this, you know, my last three years, ” Nick Saban said. “I coached in the NFL so I was used to managing the salary cap and that type of thing. But I think that it was just time for me, 72 years old. And I think it was time to have some quality of life with family, with Miss Terry, enjoy some things we’ve never been able to do.
“We’d been totally committed to, you know, coaching is not a job, it’s a way of life. So how about let’s do something else and have some fun doing something else and not live under this stress level that we’ve lived under for 50 years.”
"It was time for me. … It was time to have some quality of life with family."
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) September 29, 2026
—Nick Saban on life outside of coaching and if he would ever coach again ✍️ pic.twitter.com/3lIKG36Arn
Saban turns 75 on Halloween. The former LSU and Alabama coach is in his third season as an analyst on ESPN’s College GameDay.
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Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaign of Fred Taylor.
