Nick Saban put to rest speculation Thursday that his health or the health of Miss Terry had anything to do with his decision to announce his retirement as the Alabama coach.

“There’s no illness,” the 72-year-old coach told Rece Davis during an interview on SportsCenter on Thursday. “Miss Terry is fine. I’m fine.”

Earlier in the day, he told ESPN: “Last season was difficult for me from a health standpoint. Not necessarily having something major wrong, but just being able to do things the way I want to do them, the way I’ve always done them.”

In short, the day-to-day grind began to wear on Saban.

Davis reports Saban told him the decision to retire was “extraordinarily difficult” and didn’t come until the very last minute.

“He was talking to Miss Terry ‚and it was 3:55 and he had a meeting at 4 p.m. with the team,” David reported Saban told him. “He said, ‘I had to decide in 5 minutes which speech I was going to give,’ and, ultimately, he gave the speech to tell them it was the right time to step aside.”

Saban cited two reasons:

“To be honest, this last season was grueling,” he said. “It was a real grind for us to come from where we started to where we got to. It took a little bit 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 have always done it and be able to sustain it for the entire season? And if I couldn’t make a commitment to do that in the future like I have to do it, I thought this was the right time based on those two sets of circumstances.

“There’s never a good time, but I thought that this was the right time.”

He said his role was different this year than in past years, which directly impacted his ability to be the best version of himself.

“I was more involved with the defense,” he said. “I had to be more involved with the defense. It took a little more time. A little more stress on me. Made me feel like I wasn’t doing a good enough job as I needed to with other parts of our team.”

Finally, Saban his age was the issue.

“I actually thought that hiring coaches, recruiting players, that my age started to become a little bit of an issue,” he said. “People wanted assurances that I was going to be here for three years, five years, whatever. It got harder and harder to be honest with them.”

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.