This is an opinion column.

The sport of gymnastics baffles cavemen like us.

Its beautiful complexity is lost on so many of us raised on first downs and home runs but there was one truth we all knew.

You’ve got to stick the landing. No matter how perfect the routine was, a face plant on the dismount means you’re toast.

A year ago today, Nick Saban stood at the end of a balance beam, metaphorically speaking. Exactly 6,216 sunrises after his most recent of a string of wobbly departures, the reality was hitting the 72-year-old.

By sundown, he’d no longer be a football coach.

The news of Saban’s retirement was both stunning and predictable — a seismic headline that rippled through the college football landscape with SEC speed.

Rivals rejoiced.

Shrines were erected at the feet of his statue.

The reign was over.

A year later, the impact of that historic move comes into focus as the sport moves on and the program he left behind battles to find its footing.

Exactly 12 months later, we can assess the dismount with clarity that was hard to spot in the tumult of Jan. 10, 2024.

Given all that’s transpired in the past year, it’s hard to deduct from Saban’s departure score. It would always be an adventure in the Crimson Tide football complex in the wake of a Saban retirement, so anything that happened there is the cost of doing business.

For Saban, the timing was immaculate.

This is a man whose morning routine famously involved The Weather Channel so he could read the shifting winds. His business model (for the lack of a better term) had reached the end of its viability.

The age of dynasties was over. No longer could he hoard the best players at every position, preach patience and assembly line national title contenders with the same cruel efficiency that made him a legend.

Alabama rosters didn’t run as deep as they had a few years earlier.

Assistant coaches became harder to retain as quality began slipping there too.

Where Saban could do a quick reinvention after his powers were questioned in 2013 to win three more national titles, these headwinds were different.

What he was facing this time wasn’t a shift in on-field trends but a complete overhaul of how the sport operated. Recruiting meant not just landing high school prospects but your own locker room and a free-agent transfer market that irked Saban from the moment rules were loosened.

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A few other, more specific truths were also coming into focus. Saban’s last game was the Rose Bowl semifinal, a game lost to a Michigan team loaded with veteran talent retained by deep-pocketed alums who financed a successful NIL operation.

Before Alabama team busses could return to the hotel following that Rose Bowl loss, the school’s NIL collective was pleading with fans to contribute to its talent acquisition/retention efforts. Saban’s savvy enough to see Alabama’s fanbase, while passionate as any, lacks the billionaires and Fortune 500 CEOs that rivals boast.

Just look at the four teams playing in this week’s College Football Playoff semifinals. Notre Dame, Penn State, Ohio State and Texas have alumni bases with pockets as deep as any. And just a few weeks ago, Alabama AD Greg Byrne was passing around the hat again to the average fans to bankroll its NIL efforts.

Alabama has been playing catch-up since the advent of the NIL era and Saban could see where that momentum was headed.

And it’s not like he went out on a total down note. The 2023 team was arguably one of his least talented, one that lacked coaching staff continuity. Still, he mustered the magic one final time against the program viewed as the heir to Alabama’s dynasty. The 27-24 beating of No. 1 Georgia in the 2023 SEC Championship not only denied the Bulldogs a shot at a third straight national title, it was a walk-off insult to Saban’s former understudy.

Kirby Smart would never get to avenge the last in a string of crushing losses to his old boss.

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Going out a national champion would have been the ultimate storybook bow, but taking that Alabama team to the last four-team playoff wasn’t insignificant for Saban’s legacy.

He’s in a tier of legends few can approach. It’s a group that includes a few who held on, perhaps, a few years longer than they should have. That led to a few messy goodbyes — landings that clipped an uneven bar on the way to the ground.

Saban got to wave goodbye on a relatively high note just as the inevitable slide approached. One could reasonably argue the slip was already in progress as the once-dominant defenses had regressed along with on-field discipline.

The last few teams weren’t quite as Saban-like as the championship years, and the off-field forces were only going to hasten that regression.

We say that with full acknowledgment of how ludicrous it would be to call a three-year span with a 36-6 record a disappointment. But a discerning eye and those around the program could see cracks in the foundation — fissures that became more clear in the year without Saban.

It’s also safe to say the post-coaching year has treated Saban well.

Not yet counting ducks by his lake house, Saban’s evolved into a critically acclaimed ESPN analyst.

He’s smiling.

A lot.

Where the grind of coaching his way left little time for the basic human joys, Saban seems to be enjoying the work-life balance his dynasty didn’t allow.

This second act gives Saban a football purpose and a quasi-team unit that he always said would be so hard to leave when discussing coaching retirement.

There’s a weekly Saturday adrenaline rush on College GameDay without the risk of a calamitous loss. The best of both worlds, in a sense.

And after a 9-4 season in Tuscaloosa, the coaching ghost of Saban loomed.

True or fantasy, the “Saban’s team would never …” hovered over a year of inconsistency that only made his tenure feel even stronger. There was some degree of revisionist history in play there while noting Saban teams never had a 24-3 moment at Oklahoma on its resumé.

A lot’s changed in the year without Saban.

A lot, it must be said, was already changing.

Maintaining the level of consistency that Saban built into the greatest run in college football coaching history was clearly impossible.

So, for Saban, the time to retire was right.

Leaving the sport that became his life for decades would always be an exorcism to some degree, but time comes for us all.

A year ago today, it came calling for Saban.

And he stuck the landing.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.