Brian Kelly reveals his initial reaction to Nick Saban's retirement announcement

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban retired last month, leaving most of the college football world surprised. That includes LSU coach Brian Kelly, who was asked for his reaction to Saban’s retirement during an appearance on The Paul Finebaum Show on Thursday.

Kelly had been on a zoom with Saban earlier in the day, just hours before he announced that he was retiring.

“First of all, I was surprised,” Brian Kelly said. “We were on a zoom call the day that he made the announcement and it was business as usual. But that’s Nick, right. Never is he a guy that is going to take the easy way. I mean he’s going to work right up until the last second.”

Kelly added that Saban gave no hint during the zoom that he was even considering retiring. The zoom call was just a normal call with coaches talking.

Kelly learned that Saban was retiring the same way everyone else did.

“There was no indication,” Kelly said. “There was no, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about it.’ He probably walked in and made his mind up and said, ‘I’m moving on.’ So surprised at first, but clearly understand.”

Brian Kelly and Nick Saban faced off multiple times over the years. Kelly went up against Saban when he was at Notre Dame first and again the last couple of years at LSU. He has a tremendous amount of respect for arguably the greatest coach in college football history and will miss competing against him.

“Look, as you mentioned, he is the standard of what everybody is trying to achieve, and that is incredible consistency at the highest level, championships,” Kelly said. “He’s done it with class and distinction and he set the bar.”

Moving forward, Kelly expects Saban’s golf game to improve now that he will have more time to play, but he also Saban to remain very involved with college football. Saban has already agreed to be a part of ESPN’s College GameDay pregame show and plans to offer advice and help the sport however he can.

“Now he’s got a golf game to work on, and I’m sure he’s going to work on it every single day,” Kelly said. “But, you know, we have somebody with such great knowledge, and I know he wants to give it back, as well. I read his comments about he’s going to use this as an opportunity to do the best he can, because he loves the college student-athlete. And I think that’s going to be great for college football.”