Brett Favre reflects on why Nick Saban retired from college football: 'It's hard to shift gears and back off'

Brett Favre has no interest in coaching college football. He expressed understanding as to why seven-time national champion Nick Saban made the same choice by retiring retired at Alabama. Asked hypothetically what he would implement as the leader of a college football program in 2025, Favre immediately turned the conversation to the sport's predicament.

"Really, I think the state of college football or college athletics is one of the major reasons, if not the only reason, why Nick Saban left," Favre said on this week's "4th and Favre." "It's not necessarily about, really, it isn't about recruiting a player, signing him, developing him throughout his four years, maybe he gets five years with a redshirt. ... It's not about that anymore. It's about you go in and you recruit a kid and he says, 'How much are you going to pay me, coach?' And that's a different game than I'm used to. I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying that's the way it is right now. And I wouldn't know where to start, to be honest with you.

"If you're tough on your team and your players, they may just leave and go somewhere else and play. So, do you keep your style and the way you want to coach, or do you alter it because of the state of the game today? I don't know. I think the older coaches certainly have a harder time with it, I would think, than the younger coaches because they're entrenched in the old school mentality and it's hard to shift gears and back off."

Before announcing his retirement following a playoff loss to Michigan, Saban revealed that a majority of his Alabama players were worried about an increased role on the team the following season or financial gain through NIL initiatives, with talk of the transfer portal looming as a sort of leverage. That bothered Saban, though he said at the time it wasn't the exclusive reason he walked away.

Ironically, Saban brought up player entitlement earlier this season following Mike Gundy's firing at Oklahoma State. Like Favre, Saban alluded to coaches of yesteryear struggling to come to grips with the new norm.

"Some people have a tougher time embracing the whole idea of paying players, especially some of us old timers," Saban said. "It's a little more difficult. Mike Gundy has been a great coach for a long time. Coaching is teaching, and teaching is the ability to inspire learning. For those of us who kind of get that and that's been our self-gratification for so many years, embracing paying the players has been a little bit harder, and I think that ultimately is what got them at Oklahoma State."

Saban has long been an advocate for revenue sharing, but never wanted "players to be employees" and has balked at loosely-regulated NIL collectives in the public space.