Former Alabama coach Nick Saban retired in January 2024
His former quarterback, Greg McElroy, said in July 2025 Saban could return to coaching
Nick Saban is in his second year as an ESPN college football analyst
Whether it was because of the content of his message or the timing of it — in the doldrums of July — Greg McElroy sent shockwaves through the college football world last month when he suggested that his former coach at Alabama, Nick Saban, hadn’t necessarily roamed a sideline for the final time.
It was news to Saban — to put it mildly.
The legendary former Crimson Tide coach, who is entering his second season as a college football analyst for ESPN, dismissed McElroy’s claim at the Nick Saban Legacy Awards in Birmingham, Alabama on Monday, Aug, 18 while poking fun at the quarterback of his 2009 BCS national championship team.
“I don’t know where that came from,” the 73-year-old Saban said. “Greg McElroy played quarterback for us and if he had done something like that when he was a player, he would have gotten his (expletive) kicked.”
McElroy — who also works as an ESPN college football analyst, technically making him Saban’s colleague — said on his radio show on WJOX in Birmingham in July that he heard from a source “very much in the know” that Saban wasn’t done coaching. He added that he wouldn’t have mentioned it publicly if it “wasn’t someone notable” who made the comment to him.
In January 2024, about two weeks after Alabama lost to eventual national champion Michigan in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff, Saban retired after 17 seasons with the Crimson Tide. Saban won seven national championships as a head coach, six of which came at Alabama.
As he prepares for another season as a panelist on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” Saban said he and his wife, Terry, “don’t have any regrets” about the decision to step away.
‘I have been part of a team since I was 9 years old playing little league baseball. I just had a tremendous fear that I would miss it,” Saban said. “That part, I miss. But the working 14 hours per day, the recruiting, the changes that were going through in college football, the challenges that that presented was a little much at my age and the last year I coached.’
