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Don’t get your hopes up on Nick Saban returning to college football.
Rumors about the legendary coach’s potential comeback began earlier this week after former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy said on his radio show he was told by a source Saban may return in the future.
McElroy acknowledged he did not believe it was true.
Days later, Saban’s daughter, Kristen, posted on her Instagram story a photo of her dad walking onto the field, captioning it, “Damn, I miss this.”
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Head coach Nick Saban of the Alabama Crimson Tide before a game against the Auburn Tigers at Jordan-Hare Stadium Nov. 25, 2023, in Auburn, Ala. (Michael Chang/Getty Images)
With the timing, fans thought it was a foreshadowing of a huge announcement.
It was not.
“Apparently, some of y’all feel trolled by my last story of Nick’s walkout… he’s not coming back to coaching, hate to break it to you,” Kristen said in another post on her story, via the New York Post. “You had your time.”
Saban surprisingly retired after the 2023-24 collegiate season, which ended in a Rose Bowl loss to the eventual national champion Michigan Wolverines. And the pay-for-play landscape that college sports has become seems to have played some role in his decision even if he has denied that in past interviews.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban speaks during Southeastern Conference media day July 19, 2022, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
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“All the things I’ve believed in for all these years — 50 years of coaching — no longer exist in college athletics,” Saban said shortly after he retired. “It always was about developing players, always been about helping people be more successful in life.
“My wife even said to me — we have all the recruits over on Sunday with their parents for breakfast. She would always meet with the mothers and talk about how she was going to help impact their sons and how they would be well taken care of. She came to me right before I retired and said, ‘Why are we doing this?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘All they care about is how much you’re going to pay them. They don’t care about how you’re going to develop them, which is what we’ve always done. So why are you doing this?’
“To me, that was sort of a red alert that we really are creating a circumstance here that is not beneficial to the young people, which is why I always did what I did. My dad did it, I did it. So, that’s the reason I always like college athletics more than the 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 the Mississippi Rebels Nov. 12, 2022, at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Miss. (Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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Saban has since joined ESPN’s “College GameDay” and has fought on Capitol Hill for regulating name, image and likeness (NIL) deals.
He won seven national championships, the most ever by a head college football coach — one with LSU and six in Tuscaloosa.
Fox News’ Scott Thompson contributed to this report.
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