Chris Low, ESPN College Football Reporter

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Baseball isn't boring. Listen on your Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. You'll be glad you did. Chris, first of all, thank you for the time and thank you for the great piece that we've had a chance to read. No, thanks for having me.

It's good to be with you guys. No doubt about it. So obviously, there's some massive changes that have taken place.

I guess my first question, especially for folks who haven't necessarily read the piece yet. You know, Nick Saban signed a contract extension a few years ago, and he made it very clear that, hey, you know, I'm thinking on moving towards a year-to-year basis. So what changed in that regard? Was it just the NIL? Did things just happen quickly? What happened?

I think it was a culmination of things. He had, it's in the article, he and the AD, Greg Byrne, they talked last year, right after the season. And he wanted to give Byrne a heads up. He said, listen, he said, it's getting harder, you know, my age, you know, to coach and recruit and do all the things that I want to do at my level, the level that he expects of himself. So we probably need to start thinking year-to-year on this thing.

But, you know, you need to get ready, do what you got to do. And I just wanted to give you some notice that, you know, it's getting closer for me because, you know, he would have been, well, he will be 73 this kind of football season. So Byrne had about a year's notice to work behind the scenes. And I think as the year played out, Nick was very, it was frustrating early, but he was really proud of the team. They were not a very good football team to start the season. And he was really proud of how much improvement they made to win the SEC title, to beat Georgia, to get the playoffs. And I think a lot of things have played in it. I think the season itself took its toll on him.

As he told me, hey, at 72, it's a heck of a lot harder to put in 14 hours than it is at 62. I think that was one. This version of football and the changes, you talked about the outside of our conversation, the changes, coaches coming and going, players coming and going, having to sort of every year negotiate with players.

Hey, I'm going to jump in the portal unless you give me this deal, that deal. And I think his staff, you know, you go back and look at his staff over the last two years, he's had a ton of guys come through there. And as he interviewed prospective coaches, a lot of those guys were the assurances from, hey, coach, you're going to be here three years from now. And he said, you know, in good conscience, I really couldn't say I absolutely was. And I think all those things, I think he promised his wife, Terry, listen, when I'm done, when it's time, there won't be enough quality.

I want to have enough quality of life that we could go out and do some things that, quite frankly, they hadn't been able to do for the last 50 years. And I think as this season went on and he got to the, you know, back to campus and players were asking him about, hey, coach, can you give me this assurance or, you know, can you double my deal? I think all this was sort of a culmination as he and wife Terry talked when they went on their trip to Florida was like, you know what, this is probably the right time for me to step aside and let somebody else come in.

I'm not sure. And this is me talking for him. And when he told me, I'm not sure maybe this works the way it's always worked before and the way I want to do it. Therefore, instead of hanging around and rumbling about it or commiserating about somebody else, he said, you know what, this is a good time to do it. Let's step away.

And I think that's sort of how it all shook out, to be honest with you. ESPN senior writer Chris Lowe is joining us. The J.R. sport re-show on CBS Sports Radio. You talk about some of the reasons that Nick Saban has stepped away and he's almost like the last shoe to drop. When you think about the real legendary coaches right now active between just football and basketball, he's also been vocal about speaking up about some of the changes that that college athletic needs.

How big of a voice is he going to have? Because it's the wild, wild west right now. Well, he wants to. That's important to him. He told me that that he wants to be a voice of not necessarily change, but uniformity, sensible reform, trying to get everybody together, all the parties together to have sensible conversations about how to sort of get away from some of the chaos we have right now. And it's not to say that he's against. I think sometimes it's the misconception is that he doesn't want players to get paid.

That's not it at all. He wants to sort of figure out a way to do it, whether you bring the compensation compensation model for players in-house, whether you do contracts. But not that it's just sort of all over the place and everybody sort of playing by different rules, depending on what state you're in, your school, your collective. That's where he says, listen, it shouldn't be that if a kid's jumping from school to school every year, that it's purely, well, this agent's telling a kid I can get to this deal at X. I can get to this deal at Y. I can get to this deal at Z. You know, and let's sort of play all those schools off of each other.

There's got to be a better way to do that. It's not that you're going to keep kids from transferring, because listen, you look at some of the players who transferred over the last few years. There have been huge success stories. Joe Burrow certainly comes to mind. There's a lot of Knicks last year at Oregon, Michael Panics at Washington. We can go on and on and on.

So it's not just merely the fact that there's a transfer portal, but maybe try to come to some sensible solution to where, you know, it's not just, as you said, the Wild Wild West. Now, that in mind, to be fair, and Nick acknowledges this, coaches are making millions of dollars. I mean, he was making 11 million. Kirby Smart's making 11 million. Sarkeesian just went to 10 million. So from a coaching perspective, most of these guys are smart to realize that the players are watching this. They're seeing these salaries just continuing to increase.

Let's figure out a way to get the players a bigger slice of the pie and do it in such a way that there is some uniformity. Well, Chris, I mean, your ESPN article even detailed the transition in the period between Saban stepping down and the hiring of Kalen DeBoer. It was pretty cool to see that Bernie reached out to everybody from Joe Namath to Devante Smith. To what extent did Nick Saban have say in regards to his successor, if any?

No, he was he was certainly kept abreast. And anybody that knows Nick Saban knows the last thing he wants to do is a guy who's looking over people's shoulder. But he also wants to be a resource for Alabama.

And there's no doubt that Greg Murn kept him in the loop, asking questions. Hey, have you recruited against this guy? Tell me what you think about this guy's offense.

Do you know anything? How would this guy's style recruiting approach work at Alabama, work in the SEC? Who would have been a fool, any AD would have been a fool not to solicit that advice. Nick Saban was not, though, the guy behind the curtain turning the wheels. Again, that's not who he is. His office now is in the stadium. It's not even the football complex because he doesn't want to be there. He's not that guy that's going to be poking his head in the meetings and walking down the hallway.

He's had his run. He wants to be there. If they need him, they know that he's going to be a resource. But no, it wasn't like, you know, you hear sometimes, you know, coaches like Nick Saban won't depict their successor. That was not the case at all with him, although he was he was kept abreast.

I'll tell you a pretty cool story that the board told me. He said when he was offered the job on Friday morning, one of the first people he called was Nick Saban. He just wanted to reach out and tell him out of respect what it meant to him to follow in his footsteps, you know, the tradition and what he built at Alabama and how much it meant to him and to be the guy that follows him. A lot of people don't want to follow the guy.

They want to be the guy that follows the guy, that follows the guy. The board had enough security, enough confidence in himself that that was a challenge that he jumped at. I think he wanted Nick Saban to know that. ESPN senior writer Chris Lowe is joining us here on CBS Sports Radio. Well, having spoken to both Nick Saban and Caleb DeBoer, I guess what do you see for the program moving forward? We know the landscape flattened period inside Alabama is changing. What's going to be different for Caleb DeBoer moving forward? The first thing I would say is he's taking over a championship caliber program. He's not taking over a program that's mired in scandal, one that's sort of been a shift that's been taken on water. These guys were in the playoff last year and beat Georgia. They hadn't lost in nearly three years. Now, several players have moved on to the NFL, to other schools, but they're still a strong nucleus. So it's not like he's walking into a rebuilding situation. I think with the playoffs expanding to 12 teams, there's a little bit more breathing room for a guy like Caleb DeBoer.

You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to win the SEC. There's a little bit more margin for error there. If you lose a game or two, you've still got a pretty good chance to get in the playoff.

I think that helps. But listen, it's Alabama. Nick won six national titles there.

He won nine SEC titles. You know as well as I do. The first time DeBoer loses a game to somebody that the Alabama fans don't think he should lose to, there's going to be, Nick never lost to these guys. And he understands that. He understands that type of scrutiny awaits him.

But I'll say this about DeBoer. He is his own guy. He's not going to be anybody that people may want him to be.

He's going to do it the way he's done it. I think he's very confident in his own skin. He's a very genuine, authentic guy when you talk to him. And I don't think he's scared to go in there while always respectful of what Nick did to go in there and do it his way. And hey, the guy was in the championship game last year.

It's not like they went and got somebody that hadn't been on that stage before. Here's the other thing I like about DeBoer. He's a grinder. You know, 14 years ago he was coaching NAIA football. And won championships at that level. Went to Indiana as an offensive coordinator. Then goes to Fresno State. He's at Washington for two years. And his second year at Washington, they win the Pac-12. They beat Oregon twice.

They get to the national championship game. This guy was not born on third base in the profession. He has worked to get to this point.

And I can tell you this as well. He's really, really hungry. Well, thank you, Chris.

Let me ask you this. In the conclusion here, knowing Nick Saban, that he's going to speak up for change in college football. Knowing that, yeah, we'll see him on television. As he continues to move on into this next phase of his life, you know, what is his legacy going to be defined by? And are we expecting or should we expect to see him on TV a whole hell of a lot more? Public speaking, et cetera. What's he going to be doing? Yeah, he told me he's going to do some speaking, you know, leadership seminars, that type of thing. He'll be on game day. He has been game day every Saturday. He's going to be a part of the draft coverage.

And I'll tell you what, I'll give you a little teaser. I tune into that because he's been, when I was with him two weeks ago, he is diving in head first. Homework, research, watching tape, just like he was recruiting again. And he will know everything there is to know about these guys as teams draft him. And you know what, he's recruited a lot of these kids. He's evaluated them as coach at Alabama. And I think that will be fascinating to hear his take and the way he explains the football, the game of football. You know, the best coaches are what? The best teachers.

They're able to explain the game at a certain level to where the layman understands what they're talking about. And I think that's why he'll be so good on TV. Is zero chance that we see him on the sidelines and zero chance that we see him with another university in any other capacity? I think probably about as much chance as the two of us get together by beachfront property in Missouri. Oh, well, say Florida. Say Florida.

Say Florida. I don't see it. I just don't see it. Listen, he's he's ready to move on to the next horizon of his life. And he didn't enjoy pro football. I know they're always. That's always hung out there when he was in Alabama.

We go to the pros. He's he's ready to see the other side of life with his family, with his wife, Terry. And I talked to his daughter actually just two days ago and she says the best thing about it is he's walking away with no regrets.

And he feels good about where he is in his life and where he's headed. Good on him and good for him and his family. Well, Chris, thank you for the time and thank you for the excellent article in the read on ESPN. Where can people follow you, your work and check out this great article? Yeah, we can catch me on Twitter at Cielo ESPN and just go to ESPN right now.

I think it's at the top of the college football page. Lovely. Well, thank you, Chris. And enjoy the rest of this busy, busy season. And we look forward to chatting with you on down the line. Yeah. Thanks for having me, guys. Have a great night. Wherever you get your podcasts, you'll be glad you did.