General
At 4 p.m. CT on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024, Nick Saban began a meeting with his Alabama football team, announcing a decision he’d made just minutes before. At 4:06 p.m., ESPN’s Chris Low tweeted the news to the masses.
“Nick Saban is retiring, sources tell ESPN,” Low said in the post. “He won six national titles at Alabama.”
There they were. The 14 words Crimson Tide fans knew were coming, but dreaded nonetheless.
After Low’s post, the news spread quickly. In Tuscaloosa, Druid City Brewing Company bartender Seth Wright was at work, learning about Saban’s retirement when it flashed across one of the brewery’s televisions.
As the one-year anniversary of Saban’s retirement approached, Wright and several other Alabama fans remembered where they were, and their initial reactions to the news. Wright said he had known the news was coming, but seeing it on the screen was still shocking.
For the rest of the evening, the departure was the only topic of conversation.
“Every person that came in, they were talking about who’s coming in next, what this is going to mean for the program in the future,” Wright said. “I heard so many wild theories about where the program was going to go.”
Lacey Cencula had moved to New York a week before Saban retired, after 29 years in Alabama. She found out while walking down a street from an ESPN infographic, and raced home to follow the rest of the day’s news coverage.
Cencula couldn’t sit around long. She was scheduled to go on a first date that night.
“How do I explain to this person that’s not from Alabama?” Cencula remembered thinking. “Like, ‘Can I cancel? The head coach of my college football team just retired.’”
She went on the date anyway, noting it went fine, though it didn’t lead to any lasting relationship. Cencula described her Manhattan experience that day as “surreal,” far different than the scene back in Alabama.
Just before the news sent a herd of students to Saban’s Walk of Champions statue to leave oatmeal creme pie offerings, as if the extremely alive retiree had gone to be with Coach Bryant, Jarrod Worley got home from work. Worley, who teaches at Alberta School of Performing Arts in Tuscaloosa, let his dogs out before checking his phone.
Then, he saw Low’s tweet.
“Immediate panic sets in,” Worley said. “I copied that tweet, sent it to everyone I know, like, what on earth is going on?”
Worley said he was mostly happy the news broke after the school day.
“I would have had to stop class,” Worley said. “I have an Apple Watch on, I would have paused and been like, ‘OK class, Nick Saban just retired, let me breathe for a minute.”
JD Young, a real estate agent in Lebanon, Tenn., wasn’t so lucky. He saw an ESPN notification, and immediately heard verbal reactions throughout the rest of his office, some shocked, others jubilant.
His phone began going off.
“I had about three text messages,” Young said of the first two minutes after the notification. “Two people walking into my office to ask if I know, and two phone calls.”
Jackson Starling was at work as an IT project manager in Tallahassee, Fla., and had been expecting a retirement announcement after the Crimson Tide’s 2023 season ended with a Rose Bowl loss. Still, the finality of the news ruined his day.
“My wife, who has no interest in football whatsoever, had a glass of Scotch waiting for me,” Starling said.
Starling’s wife understood. Patton Smith, who was working from home as creative director of an advertising agency in Roswell, Ga., confused his.
“I started crying,” Smith said of the moments after he received the Low tweet in a text message. “Literally, I didn’t have any meetings going on at that point. I just started crying. My wife went to Virginia Tech, and she was just like, ‘Who is this lunatic that I’m married to?’ This feels so over the top, but it legitimately felt like I found out my dog died.”
He wasn’t the only one crying that day. But as a UA alum and Tuscaloosa native who grew up hearing the sounds of Bryant-Denny Stadium while playing outdoors, Smith took it especially hard.
When he tallied it up, Smith had attended 10 combined SEC and national championship games during the Saban era. But after 17 seasons, the run was over.
“Most epic run ever,” Smith said. “Yeah, I cried like my dog had died, that’s my legacy.”
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