'Sad,' 'Shocked:' Alabama high school coaches react to Saban's retirement
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‘Sad,’ ‘Shocked:’ Alabama high school coaches react to Saban’s retirement

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Theodore High head football coach Steve Mask said he wasn’t as much surprised about Alabama coach Nick Saban retiring on Wednesday as he was sad.

“There has been a lot of hinting around that this might be his final season,” said Mask, an Alabama High School Hall of Famer. “When you see an icon do what he has done at Alabama, you hope it never comes to an end. I hate to see it happen.”

Mask was one of several high school coaches around the state who reacted to the news that broke late Wednesday afternoon. Saban spent 17 years at Alabama, winning six national titles.

“We are losing one of the all-time greats,” UMS-Wright coach Terry Curtis said. “You knew it would happen sometime, but you hope it wouldn’t yet. My hope is that everything is good with him and his wife health wise. I think he just got tired of this rat race that he’s in. It’s 24-7 for them. You get our age and that gets old quick. He’s one of the old-school guys. He believed in team chemistry and playing for each other and a lot of that stuff is gone. I’m happy for him.

Saban finishes his career with 297 wins, four Heisman Trophy winners, 10 SEC championships, eight playoff appearances and seven national titles – six at Alabama.

“I think he’s probably the best to ever coach college football,” Auburn High coach Keith Etheredge said. “There better be someone really good to follow him with all the stuff that he has accomplished there. I’m sure it will be someone great, but, boy, that is a tough act to follow. Nobody wants to follow THAT guy, but at the same time there will be a bunch of people who want that job if that makes sense.”

Thompson head coach Mark Freeman said he was “a little surprised” by the news.

“You hear it floating around little, but you don’t believe it,” Freeman said. “I think coach (Saban) thought he did his best job in a long time this year. Sometimes you do your best job, and you don’t win the game. I don’t think he will ever really retire, though. I think he’s got something in the works. I guess we will wait to see what that is.”

Curtis said the key to Saban’s Alabama dynasty is not hard to find.

“He came in there and did it his way,” he said. “He was going to be in charge. He took the boosters out of the equation until he got it the way he wanted, and there weren’t a lot of people who would tell him how to do it. He had a process, and it worked. If it hadn’t, it probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has.”

Each of the veteran coaches praised Saban’s relationship with the high school coaches in the state as well.

“He is a coach’s coach, but I don’t think he ever lost where his true values were, and the genuineness of that,” Mask said. “He was really good with some of us older coaches. He was good about staying in touch.”

Etheredge described Saban as “very personable.”

“A lot of people say he’s not, but every time I’ve been around him he’s been very personable,” he said. “At one point, I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and I walked in the room with him and he’s like, ‘Hey, Keith how is it going?’ it’s real with him. It always has been.”