Alabama Football Championship Trophy Presentaion

Bill Battle and Nick Saban receive the College Football Playoff trophy after Alabama won the College Football Playoff National Championship football game, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016, at JW Marriott in Scottsdale, Ariz.

(Vasha Hunt/vhunt@al.com )

Bill Battle wasn't seeking the Alabama athletics director job when the alma mater came calling four years ago.

And when he took the job, one task wasn't on list bucket list for his four years back in Tuscaloosa. Hiring a new football coach? No thanks, Battle said. That only made the month of December 2013 a little more trying, the retiring athletics director said in a Thursday interview.

Retaining Nick Saban in his first year on the job was among the two most challenging moments along with firing basketball coach Anthony Grant in 2015, Battle said.

"Probably that kept me up the most at night was Coach Saban's contract and the Texas incident," Battle said.

Alabama had just lost the infamous Kick Six Iron Bowl and news reports from Texas linked Saban with the soon-to-be-open Longhorns job.

The exact level of interest from the Saban camp in Texas remains mysterious to this day. Saban later said he never had direct contact with the school. His agent, Jimmy Sexton, had contact with Longhorns officials as Mack Brown's days came to an end.

Less than a year after taking over for the late Mal Moore, who hired Saban, Battle did everything he could to hold on to the coach who won three titles in four years from 2009-12.

A new deal between Alabama and Saban was announced Dec. 13, 2013. Before that, there were uneasy days in that athletics director's office.

"Well, they were very intense," Battle said Thursday. "He never told me that he had any interest he was going. But I was reading he was offered $10 million and a percent of the Longhorn Network."

So, Battle said he called the Saban house. He got Terry Saban, Nick's wife. She said he was out recruiting but should be home soon. The coach called later.

"'Look, I'm recruiting and trying to get ready for Oklahoma,'" Battle recalled Saban saying. "I said, well, that's what I want to hear. That's what I said and that's what I thought. But you never knew. I didn't want to lose Nick Saban under my watch.

"So, until it got done, it was tense."

Saban's new deal paid him a college football high $6.9 million a year plus bonuses. He went on to win the next three SEC titles, the 2015 national championship before losing the 2016 title game last Monday to Clemson.

Battle will continue as Alabama's AD until March 1 when Greg Bryne takes over. His replacement will be introduced publicly at 2 p.m. Thursday.

Bryne, currently at Arizona with SEC experience at Mississippi State and Kentucky, is the right man to hire Saban's replacement when the day comes, Battle said. From the day he replaced Moore in 2013, the 75-year old Battle knew he would be at the helm for a limited period of time. The monumental task of hiring a football coach should go to someone who would be in the job for a less defined period, Battle said.

"If I had to do it, I would do it," Battle said. "But I didn't think it was the right thing to do. If you had time, even if you had to do it simultaneously, you ought to bring in an athletic director to hire the new football coach here."

The 2015 firing of Grant was also discussed when Battle sat down with local reporters. The Tide had just lost to Florida in the SEC tournament with an 18-14 record. Grant was 117-85 in six seasons that included one NCAA tournament game.

Battle said he "loved" Grant and wanted to keep him.

"But we both decided the way it all played out, that he was better off going somewhere else and we were better off going somewhere else," Battle said. "Hiring Avery (Johnson) was a very difficult challenge because everyone knew what I was doing before I did it. And that makes it difficult."

Johnson, a former NBA star and coach of the Mavericks and Nets, was hired 22 days after Grant's firing. It was considered the biggest hire of the five Battle made in his four seasons at Alabama.

The rest of the stress came from the other traditional sources, Battle said.

"You always wake up in the morning with 500 and some student athletes and 300 employees and hope nobody's done something bad the night before," Battle said with a grin. "Some days, some have. Those aren't very good moments. But that comes with the territory. Those are probably the two things that I lost the most sleep over."