Few coaching exits in football have been picked apart as much as Nick Saban’s from the Miami Dolphins. He spent two seasons there, left for Alabama in January 2007, and went on to win six national championships. Close to 20 years later, he is still explaining how it all went down.
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“I had not talked to Alabama and would not talk to them, and told them, ‘I’m not dealing with this until the end of the season,'” Saban said in a conversation on Mad Dog Sports Radio. “And at the time I wasn’t interested, I was interested in our team.”
Saban added that he did not want the Dolphins to feel distracted or to think he was. That matches what he told the public back then. After Alabama let coach Mike Shula go following a 6-6 season, reports kept naming Saban as the target.
In late December 2006, Saban said, “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.” Then quarterback Joey Harrington said Saban had told the players he was proud to be a Dolphin and planned to stay. But in early January 2007, Saban announced he was leaving Miami for Alabama. So what changed? Saban pointed to his wife.
“Miss Terry wanted to go back to college because she liked it better,” Saban said. “She liked her involvement in college and the community and the whole atmosphere and pageantry around college football, and the impact that she could have on the community and the program.”
The coach also admitted he spoke with Alabama after telling the media he wouldn’t. “I don’t know how I could have handled it better, but it wasn’t a good way to handle it,” he said.
In a 2010 interview with Sporting News, as reported by NBC, Saban said he would have kept his commitment to the Dolphins while refusing to answer questions about Alabama. He apologized for possible “professional mishandling.”
Hal Habib of the Palm Beach Post and Monte Burke’s Saban biography, published back in 2015, revealed Saban hinted at interest through Chuck Moore, the nephew of Alabama athletic director Mal Moore, who then traveled to Florida hoping to meet Saban.
Moore didn’t get the meeting he came for. Saban was across town talking with Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga, so Moore ended up at the Sabans’ Fort Lauderdale house with Miss Terry. By then, Nick Saban had already made up his mind to stay in Miami and had told her he didn’t want to see Moore.
Miss Terry saw it differently, though, and urged him to take the meeting, and she told Moore her husband wasn’t happy in the NFL and missed coaching in college. After that, Saban went back to Huizenga for another talk.
As a consequence of his decision, Miami did not do well after he left. The Dolphins went 15-17 under Saban in two seasons, finishing 9-7 in 2005 and 6-10 in 2006. Cam Cameron took over, and the team went 1-15 in 2007. Saban has argued that he left the team better, especially on defense, and he pointed to the quarterback situation.
Miami weighed Drew Brees and Daunte Culpepper and went with Culpepper, whom Saban said the team believed was healthier. He said the team lacked a quarterback in his second season, and he does not call his time there a failure.
Alabama, meanwhile, became one of the great runs in the sport. Saban coached there from 2007 through 2023, won nine SEC titles, and had four Heisman winners. He went into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2025 and now works as an analyst on ESPN’s College GameDay.