Thanks, Nick. Now, one more thing....

The best alltime coach retired Wednesday, but his game needs him more than ever.

Nick Saban didn’t resign on Wednesday. He retired. He used to say his next stop, after Alabama, would be at Lake Burton, in Georgia. That was before he built the $28 million beach house in Jupiter, Fla. If you’re going to do that, you might want to spend more than four days a year there, without making recruiting calls. Saban is 72 and entitled to as much deep-sea fishing as he wants. If he’s as relentless and meticulous at fishing as he was at football, he’ll be able to feed every bear in the world.

The problem is that college football  loses its alltime coach at the same time it devolves into Afghanistan. Transfers-on-demand, unfettered free agency without salary guidelines, and conference dissolution have made it ungovernable. Twelve teams will enter the College Football Playoff next year to play for what surely will be called the Nick Saban Trophy someday, and the regular season will lose most of its weekly drama. It cries for a prime minister or maybe even a grand potentate. Saban is the only person who can make this romper room go quiet whenever he steps in.

The assumption is that Saban got tired of coaching in this whirlwind, even though this year’s Crimson Tide improved dramatically and took Michigan into overtime during the playoff semifinal. If he could create a sensible framework that puts players and the competition first, that would be as meaningful as his seven national championships.

And if given the opportunity, who knows? Saban works like fish swim.

His dad Nick ran a gas station in Monongah, W. Va. Some may remember when gas station owners didn’t just know how to order Funyuns. They changed tires, fixed fan belts, replaced water pumps, and, yeah, sold snacks, too. Father Saban coached a Pop Warner team that his son quarterbacked, and later the son would win a state championship. The dad died when he was 46 and Nick was 22. Among the catchphrases was: “God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listen twice as much as you talk.”

The next great molder of this one-man Rushmore was Don James, who later became one of the two best Pac-8/10/12 coaches of alltime at Washington. James coached Kent State. If he had a noon meeting, his mouth would begin moving when the second hand hit the top of the dial, because James had already calculated how long it would take to get to the podium. Saban noticed that and absorbed it like a sponge. When he has brought troubled coaches into his program like Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian, that’s what they remember. There are no small details.

Oh, and there was also the May day in 1970 when Saban intended to join a student protest against the presence of National Guard troops. He had lunch with a friend first, meaning he wasn’t on the scene when those troops killed four students.

Over the years Saban and his wife Terry, whom he met in the seventh grade, trudged from job to job, learning the trade and the life one yard line at a time. He developed assembly instructions for long-term winning. All he needed, at the end of that line, was a place bulging with great athletes and a place where football just meant more. At Alabama he told his assistants to find 6-foot-2 cornerbacks with long arms and instincts, and there were always several within the Yellowhammer State. Or in Georgia, next door.

Everybody knows how dominant Saban has been, but maybe some details are necessary there, too. He actually won those seven titles, one at LSU and six at ‘Bama, through BCS or CFP playoffs, None were awarded through a wire-service poll, or designated before the bowl games were even played. Saban also did it during a day of scholarship limits, 30 per year and 85 overall, and there was a reason the ‘Bama job was open in the first place. In the ten years before Saban arrived, the Crimson Tide was two games below .500 in SEC games. Saban just finished his 16th season there. He was 7-6 in his 2007 debut. In the next 15 he never failed to win at least 10 games. In his final nine years, he won an average of 12.8.

All of that was known, in the Saban household, as “rat poison.” The maintenance of normalcy, in the face of near-perfection, was Saban’s Job One. His players were expected to greet each day with the same diligence, whether the upcoming opponent was Georgia or Tennessee-Martin. His coaches got a half-hour for lunch and were encouraged to have that lunch at their desks. Terry, who reserved the family dining room for recruiting dinners, told Nick to light up the team’s backside during Mississippi State week this year. Nick did. “She knew nothing about football when we meet but there’s no doubt she thinks she is the head coach at Alabama,” he said. “No doubt.”

So he made a great villain. His frequent rants were mandatory internet viewing. His sideline ire was unmistakable. Yet people within the sanctum began to put out a different word, that Saban was proving you could be humane and demanding, too. And fair. There were no agendas or favorite sons. Meet the expectations and everything would be fine.

Occasionally a player would stray, and fans and media would demand a suspension or an expulsion or worse. Saban would bring up Muhsin Muhammad, his Michigan State receiver. Muhammad was already on probation for a marijuana charge when police found a gun in his glove compartment. Saban, in his first year, could have won toughness points if he had ejected Muhammad. Instead he suspended him for a game, took the flak, and Muhammad had a 14-year pro career. His son plays for Texas A&M now. Beyond that, Muhammad founded a private equity company.

There’s a pretty good array of Saban imitators out there, including Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz, and there’s a growing sheaf of Saban stories, some told by the man himself. In the 2017 CFP final, Saban replaced Jalen Hurts with Tua Tagovailoa at halftime. In overtime, Tua took a dubious sack, which turned Saban purple on the sideline, but on the next play he found Devonta Smith for the touchdown that beat Georgia.

Afterward, Saban was still miffed. “How could you take that sack?” he said Tagovailoa.

“Coach, I was just trying to leave myself enough room to throw that pass,” Tua said.

“That is NOT funny,” Saban replied, but laughed anyway.

One day Saban found a way to watch his son Bryce play basketball. The referees weren’t kind, and Bryce drew a technical. At home, Nick went chapter and verse on how a player needs to maintain his cool. Bryce replied, “Dad, how many headsets have you busted this year?”

“He got me there,” Saban said.

The ripples will eventually disappear and Alabama will find another coach. The most prominent name on Wednesday was Oregon’s Dan Lanning. A more interesting one is DeMeco Ryans, the Houston Texans’ coach, and one of Alabama’s alltime linebackers. Kiffin, Sarkisian, Mike Norvell…..we do know it won’t be a mystery guest from the FCS, even though that might well be the best football approach. This is Alabama. It’s not Open Mic night.

The successor will walk toward Bryant-Denny Stadium and past a statue of the man who capitalized Alabama football, sent 42 men to head coaching jobs, and has 57 NFL players right now.

The man himself leaves behind a mess not of his own making. But, if asked, Nick Saban might well decide to clean it.