The Reactions Are Pouring In After News Broke That Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban Plans To Retire

Wednesday afternoon the sports world was shocked to hear that legendary Alabama head football coach Nick Saban is retiring.

The 72-year-old Saban coached the Crimson Tide to six National Championships. Before arriving in Tuscaloosa, Saban coached the LSU Tigers to a national championship.

This year, he led the team to an SEC Championship over Georgia and a College Football Playoff appearance. That ended with an overtime loss to Michigan in the Rose Bowl.

However, that loss doesn't matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of Saban's legacy. That was cemented a long, long time ago.

You could see the impact he has had on the game by the way people reacted to this news. One of the more notable reactions came from Colorado Buffaloes head coach and NFL great Deion Sanders. In his first season leading a Power 5 program, Sanders would often talk about how he looked to Saban as a mentor.

Even Sanders was caught off-guard by the news. Moreover, he argued that the current state of college football is what led Saban to call it a career.

X Was Flooded With Reaction To The Nick Saban News

Most reactions to the news of Saban's retirement followed the same angles as Sanders' take. That one of — if not the greatest — college football coach was hanging them up.

As you could probably guess, there will be a lot of eyes on Tuscaloosa to see how this transition of power to the next head coach goes.

Can the program keep up the winning ways that it had for nearly two decades under Saban?

We shall see, but it'll be a tall order to follow someone who gave pregame speeches like Nick Saban:

That made me want to run through a wall and I'm watching it several years later and know the results of the game.

Not a lot of people can pull that off.

Follow on X: @Matt_Reigle