Greg Byrne was hoping to kick the can down the road for as long as Nick Saban would let him. However, since becoming Alabama’s athletic director in 2017, he always knew his biggest job would be to replace the greatest coach college football has ever seen.

As part of the new FOX Nation documentary, "The Tides That Bind: Inside Alabama Football" Byrne revealed his plan for replacing Saban following the head coach’s retirement.

After taking the job at Alabama, Byrne said he began crafting an outline of the steps he’d take whenever Saban decided to step down. On Jan. 10, 2024, that plan came into effect.

Byrne sat in the back of an Alabama team meeting room, still hoping Saban would decide to prolong his career. However, he was also prepared for the alternative — a move set off a stopwatch for him and the rest of the Alabama program.

“I said to Coach Saban, ‘If you start talking about offseason workouts and academics and priorities, then I’m going to disappear out of the back of the room,‘” Byrne said on the latest episode of the documentary. “Nobody knows I was going to be there. But I said, 'If you start doing the retirement speech, that’s when the plan starts going into place.’”

Following a few stumbles and teary-eyed moments, Saban sucked the air out of the room, announcing the end to his legendary career which included six national titles over 17 years at Alabama and seven national championships overall.

“The players are like shocked,” Denzel Devall, a director of player development, said in the documentary. “I think staff members are shocked. Everybody is in disbelief like it’s a dream. When he walks off the stage, that’s when reality hits like, ‘Damn, the GOAT gone.’”

Following a stunned ovation for Saban’s career, Byrne got to work.

“I went after the team, and I started calling out a few of the leaders,” Byrne said. “I said, ‘You going to hold this thing together? You going to hold the locker room together?' And it was a kind of tepid response.”

Everyone knows the story from there. Byrne asked Alabama’s players for 72 hours to find a new head coach before they made any decisions about entering the transfer portal.

“The 72 hours was something myself, Dr. Bell — our university president — and the board basically came up with on our own,” Byrne said. “I just thought, realistically how quickly do I think we can get this done, knowing that the longer the search took, the better chances that there could be cracks in the foundation.”

Byrne went about putting together a committee of assistants close to players in order to keep as much of Alabama’s roster intact as possible. That list included names such as directors of player development Josh Chapman, Denzel Devall and HaHa Clinton-Dix, among others.

“We all tried to basically break down the list of who’s comfortable with these dudes. Who got these dudes?” Chapman said. “I mean, you're just trying to still keep that relationship there.”

Added Clinton Dix: “I don’t think I went to sleep that night. Just reaching out to our guys, getting their thoughts and how they’re feeling. I’m calling all those guys with the same exact message, ‘Hey, let’s give it a chance. Let’s sit down. Let’s think about it.’”

Byrne lived up to his end of the deal, hiring Kalen DeBoer 49 hours following Saban’s retirement, turning a new chapter in Alabama football.

Unlike Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Seattle isn't a college-football-crazed city. That made life a bit easier for Byrne, who met with DeBoer on Jan. 11. In the documentary, Byrne describes his first meeting with DeBoer in a downtown hotel room.

“Talking to a coach, you’ve got to talk to him about A to Z, academics to zone defense,” Byrne said. “How are you going to do it? We were able to pretty early on in the conversation, like ‘Man, this is a good guy. This is a really good football coach.’”

Byrne said he asked DeBoer’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, who reassured him that DeBoer would wait for him to interview other candidates following their conversation. Byrne didn’t reveal how many candidates he called but stated it was “an extremely short list.”

The interview between DeBoer and Byrne occurred on a Thursday. From there DeBoer had some conversations with his family that night before being offered the job the following morning.

Interestingly enough, DeBoer’s wife, Nicole, somewhat broke the news of her husband’s hiring to a Nordstrom employee. Nicole told Fox Nation that she was shopping at the time she received the text from her husband that he was taking the Alabama job.

“He’s like, we’re leaving in about three hours,” Nicole recalled of her conversation with Kalen. “I swung into Nordstrom’s, and we don’t have anything red. So I was like, I’m going to try to get him a couple of red ties or something just so we were prepared.”

That set off alarm bells to the employee at the register.

“The guy looks at me, and he’s like, ‘These are not purple,’” Nicole said. “And I’m like, ‘They are not.’ He said, ‘These are red.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s crimson actually, but yeah.’

“And he said, thank you for everything you guys did. Best of luck.’”

Before bringing a few members of his on-field coaching staff with him to Alabama, DeBoer reached out to a couple of key assistants from his Washington team. Those included executive assistant to the head coach, Ali Smith and general manager, Courtney Morgan.

Smith received the news the Friday DeBoer was hired, which happened to be her birthday. Morgan was also notified that day and made the flight to Tuscaloosa with DeBoer.

“Got to the building, had a staff meeting, went home, threw some stuff in a bag, and we were on the plane, me him, his wife and his two kids,” Morgan recalled. “Not really having time to even think about the magnitude of what’s happening.”

After getting off the plane, DeBoer received a police escort to Alabama’s Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility to speak with the players. Before even touring the facility or soaking in the moment, he was thrown into a meeting where he addressed the team for the first time.

DeBoer said he realized at the time that his speech would set the tone and the expectation for his team moving forward. Despite being thrown into the fire, he was able to make a positive first impression on his players.

"Man, this is awesome, this is awesome," DeBoer started in his speech to the players. "It's been a whirlwind of a day. I can't imagine what it's been for you guys. Not just the day, but the last three days. I think about the last couple of weeks. I just came from a place where I just bawled my eyes out about five hours ago in front of a group just like this. And that's hard. And I'm sure that happened just a couple of days ago when coach Saban was up here. Because that's who you came to play for. He has a staff, an amazing staff. You guys have accomplished so much. I mean, right? Let's just say what it is: he's the best to ever do it. And I get that."

After listing off his values, DeBoer described his vision for the program, telling his players he wanted to help them develop for the next level while also winning championships.

“The one thing he told our leadership group that I’ll never forget that made me want to run through a wall for him right away was, ‘You didn’t choose me, I chose you,’” Clinton-Dix said. “And when he said that, I’m like, ‘Damn, that’s true.’ And it takes a man with high character and high confidence to want to even come in behind Coach Saban and take on this job. I was ready to give him everything I had from that day forward.”