Nick Saban says that 10 minutes before announcing his retirement he still hadn't decided whether he was actually going to retire, and says he had two speeches prepared for his players, one announcing he was staying for another season and the other telling them he was retiring “I think, for me, I never wanted to ride the program down. I never wanted to coach where my age and my inability to have a positive impact was going to start to see the program go down. And I felt like, at 72 years old, that last season was really, really hard.” “We lost early on, and the team really improved, and we got in the playoffs, and they did a fantastic job. But it was very challenging, and I just didn’t know what I was going to do.” “I think this is in the documentary. I’m sitting there, I’ve got a 4:00 team meeting. I’ve got two speeches. I’ve got one that says I’m staying, and this is what we’ve got to do. We had a young team, so we’d have been good the next year. This is what we have to do. And then over here, I’m going to tell the players I’m going to retire.” “And that was 10 minutes till four, and I didn’t know which one I was going to do.” “I called Miss Terry, and she said, ‘You know, if you’re that stressed out about it and there’s that much turmoil, you have to do this at some point in time, whether it’s this year, next year, or the next year. So if you feel that much anxiety about making the decision, maybe now’s the time to do it while you still have your health and quality of life is good enough that we can do other things. So that’s basically what brought us to that decision.”