Alabama AD Greg Byrne explains when he ultimately knew Nick Saban would retire

Until the man stood up in front of his team and said it himself, even Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne wasn’t sure that Nick Saban was seriously going to retire. But the legendary coach did, in fact, hang it up and set the table for a major hire for Byrne.

Joining “The Paul Finebaum Show” on Wednesday, almost exactly a week after Saban retired, Byrne recounted how he processed the reality that Saban was, in fact, retiring. He really did need to see it to believe it.

“I felt he was going to step down, going into the meeting. But, you know, hoping that he wouldn’t. Until I actually heard it, I didn’t want to really believe it, right? And he’s going to — I’ve said this before: Most programs haven’t had one iconic coach. Alabama’s had two. And it’s amazing, to be able to — I never met coach Bryant, obviously — to have the success that coach Saban had and the sustained success that he had, his ability to stay focused on the task at hand and allowing him to take those things one at a time is truly remarkable. And so I think really, as he wrestled with that decision, until the words came out of his mouth, I don’t know if anybody was quite sure about it. So it was a very difficult decision for him, understandably,” Byrne said.

Byrne, however, was not caught off guard entirely by Saban’s decision.

The now-former head coach stays meticulously focused throughout the season so retirement thoughts didn’t really creep in, though Byrne assumes that Saban and his wife, Terry — known commonly as Miss Terry — did discuss the possibility prior to it coming up between Saban and his boss.

And Byrne credited Saban for communicating with him throughout so the department could be prepared to move.

“I would say, coach is, as everybody knows — he’s so focused, right? And he’s as focused an individual as I’ve ever worked with and I’ve been around coaches my entire life. So he didn’t even allow that to be part of the conversation until he felt it was at a point where he could even have the conversation. So I’m certainly assuming that he and Miss Terry talked about it before he and I talked about it, understandably. But no, he stayed focused on what the task was at hand. But at the same time, too, and I said this publicly, he didn’t surprise me because he had been communicating with me, which I truly appreciate. It helped us be in the best position that we could be when that time came,” Byrne said.