Nick Saban explains why he decided to retire as Alabama head football coach

One day after Nick Saban suddenly retired as Alabama head coach, the seven-time national championship winner detailed why he decided to step away from the position.

Speaking to ESPN, Saban said he informed his players and staff of his decision to retire at 4 p.m. Wednesday meeting. He emphasized it was important for those in the program to hear the news from him first. Saban said the announcement was difficult, but he thought about how he would be asking everyone to give 100% to win a championship, and how it gotten harder to do the same, questioning "how long are you going to do this for?"

Ultimately, the 72-year-old said his age was making it harder for him to do the job he had done for the past 17 seasons.

"Last season was difficult for me from just a health standpoint, not necessarily having anything major wrong, but just being able to sustain and do things the way I want to do them, the way I've always done them," he said. "It just got a little bit harder. So you have to decide, 'OK, this is sort of inevitable when you get to my age.'"

More: Nick Saban coaching tree: Alabama coach's impact on college football will be felt for decades

Saban added it would be unfair to tell people he would be at Alabama for four-to-five more years, and have constant questions about whether he would step away at the end of each following season.

"Which I would have been happy to try to do, but I just didn't feel like I could do that and didn't want to get into a year-to-year deal that doesn't help anybody and doesn't help you continue to build and be at the standard that I want to be at and want this program to be at," Saban said.

Saban also shot down any belief the changing landscape of college football, like NIL, was behind his reasoning for leaving the job.

"Don't make it about that. It's not about that," Saban said. "To me, if you choose to coach, you don't need to be complaining about all that stuff. You need to adjust to it and adapt to it and do the best you can under the circumstances and not complain about it. Now, I think everybody is frustrated about it.

"But it ain't about that. We've been in this era for three years now, and we've adapted to it and won in this era, too. It's just that I've always known when it would be time to turn it over to somebody else, and this is that time."

Even though he's no longer head coach, Saban said he is "always going to be here for Alabama however they need me," as the school attempts to find his replacement, but there's a lot he wants to do with his life with his retirement.

Watch: Nick Saban explains why he's retiring

Why is Nick Saban retiring now?

"I don't think there's any good time," Saban told ESPN's Rece Davis. "...I actually thought in hiring coaches, recruiting players, that my age (72) started to become a little bit of an issue. People wanted assurances that I would be here for three years, five years, whatever, and it got harder and harder for me to be honest about.

"And to be honest, this last season was grueling, it was a real grind for us to come from where we started to where we got to. Took a little more out of me than usual. When people mention the health issue it was really just the grind of can you do this the way you want to do it? Can you do it the way you've always done it, and be able to sustain it and do it for the entire season? And if I couldn't make a commitment to do that in the future the way I think I have to do it, I thought maybe this was the right time..."

Nick Saban on his health

"There's no illness. Ms. Terry is fine, I'm fine. It was the can you sustain the season from a mental grind standpoint? When I was young I could work until 2 in the morning and get up at 6 and be there the next day and be full of energy and go for it. When you get a little older, that gets a little tougher and I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that."

When did Nick Saban make the decision to retire?

Saban told Davis he made the final decision to retire Wednesday mere moments before Alabama's 4 p.m. team meeting.

"It was a hard decision. Look, I love coaching. I love the relationships with the players. The thing that made it more difficult for me is I felt like it might be the right time for me, but how it impacted the players, the coaches, all the people who work here in the building and contributed to the success of the team, how would it affect them? That was the hard part. That was the part I kept vacillating on back and forth," Saban said.

What was it like telling the team he was retiring?

Saban told Davis it was "difficult" to tell the team he was hanging it up.

"Very difficult. Because I love those guys sitting in that room. I love those players," Saban said. "There's nothing more that I respect than great competitors. These guys all overcame tremendous resiliency. They committed to the program. They committed themselves to the team for next year and I wanted to go in and say 'hey, I want everybody to make 100% commitment for the next 12 months.' But I got to be able to make that same kind of commitment if I'm going to be the leader and the coach. So, that was a little bit of a dilemma."

Nick Saban on his future

Though Saban has stepped down, he's not going away completely.

"I'm going to be here, so I'm going to be here for (the players). I'm going to have a presence. I'm going to stay in Tuscaloosa. They're giving me an office in the stadium. I said (to the players) I can get on your butt from there just like I can from on the field."

Nick Saban on future of college football

"I will be dedicated to college football and the future of college football," Saban said. "...I'm going to be an advocate for trying to make the game as good as it can be. And I do think there's probably more to come when it comes to this topic from my standpoint."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why did Nick Saban retire? Coach explains decision to leave Alabama