Nick Saban sat in his office and stared at the clock Wednesday. The minutes ticked down until he had to make a final choice at 3:55 p.m. CT ahead of a 4 p.m. Alabama football team meeting.

The now-former Alabama head coach told ESPN Thursday that he had two speeches he could give. In one, he would commit to sticking around for another season, in the other, the one he eventually delivered, he could announce his retirement.

Up until it was time to go, he chatted with his wife Terry.

“She said, ‘I will support you, whatever you choose to to,’” Saban told ESPN in an on-camera interview Thursday. “She said ‘I will work hard if you want to stay and do it one more year.”

Saban said he knew the day was coming. He could feel his 72 years starting to slow him down and he didn’t want to do the job if he couldn’t perform to the same standard he always had.

In the end, he headed for the meeting and told his players the news. His time at the post he had held for 17 seasons was over.

“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?” Saban said in the ESPN interview. “That was the hard part and that was the part that I kept vacillating on.”

Saban said some of the hardest people to break the news to included the Crimson Tide defensive backs, specifically Malachi Moore and Caleb Downs.

“I encouraged them to continue to do the things that they’ve always done to be successful,” Saban said. “And one of the things I encouraged the team to do is, ‘You guys all need to play for each other. They’ll hire a really good coach here. You’ll have good coaches.’”

Alabama’s search for a new coach continued on Thursday. The Crimson Tide’s first game of the post-Saban era is Aug. 31 at Bryant-Denny Stadium against Western Kentucky.