Nick Saban, 67, recently had hip replacement surgery.

Financial sites estimate Saban’s net worth in the tens of millions of dollars.

He’s a grandfather who come January will have worked as a football coach in six different decades.

He’s cemented his legacy as well, having tied Paul “Bear” Bryant for the most national championships by a college football coach.

No reasonable person would blame Saban if he retires after the 2019 season, and chooses to spend more time at his Lake Burton vacation home while collecting checks from his Mercedes-Benz dealership and other sources of revenue.

Saban’s eventual retirement has been a source of speculation (and, for opposing fans, hope) for years. The topic resurfaced last month due to his hip surgery.

Betting odds for Nick Saban’s retirement date

But, taking into account Saban’s personality, oddsmakers at MyBookie set the over/under of Saban’s retirement at 5.5 more seasons.

Saban’s current contract runs through the 2025 season. Those odds project that Saban will retire in 2023 or 2024, just before the contract ends, but after every current Alabama freshman has exhausted his college eligibility.

MyBookie also created a prop bet that allows wagering on exactly what year Saban will retire, with the following options (implied odds in parenthesis):

-After the 2019 season: +700 (12.5 percent)

-After the 2020 or 2021 season: +350 (22.2 percent)

-After the 2022 or 2023 season: +300 (25 percent)

-After the 2024 season: +300 (25 percent)

-After the 2025 season: +175 (36.4 percent)

-2026 or beyond: +650 (13.3 percent)

Those implied odds add up to 134.4 percent. In other words, the oddsmakers have tacked on an extra 5.7 percent to each of the six options as a sort of pricing insurance.

(The longer the odds, the more the sportsbook would have to pay out if gamblers wagered correctly, so they make sure the implied odds add up to more than 100 percent.)

Even accounting for that price inflation, the sportsbook is implying there’s a better than 30 percent chance that Saban finishes out the remaining seven years on his contract.

It seems unlikely that even Saban knows when he’ll retire. But there are at least a few factors one can consider when trying to handicap this prop.

Recruiting: Alabama still No. 1 for now

Playing football for the University of Alabama is attractive.

You enjoy arguably the best facilities and support staff in the country. You have a tremendous shot at an NFL career. And you’re almost guaranteed to win a national championship.

What percentage of those elements will fade one or two years after Saban leaves?

A lot of that depends on whether he stays long enough for it to decay while he’s still on the job. The unknown is enough to make potential recruits think, or at least for opposing programs to plant ideas in their heads.

Alabama has earned the 247Sports Composite No. 1 overall ranking in eight of the last nine years.

But the implementation of an early signing period and the rise of Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs contributed to the Tide finishing fifth in those rankings for the 2018 class. It was the lowest-ranked full class since Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2007. (The ’07 class ranked No. 12, but Saban, hired in January, did not get to spend the full cycle recruiting.)

Saban revamped his coaching staff, adding and promoting young, energetic recruiters to recapture the No. 1 overall spot in 2019. But that same staff seemed to hinder the Tide in a 44-16 loss to Clemson in the College Football Playoff championship game.

Now he’s reverted to an older, more experienced group of on-field assistants.

Tracing back to the signing of receiver Julio Jones in 2008, recruiting has been the lifeblood of Saban’s program. He’s often done more to develop five-star talent than other coaches, but out-recruiting every other program in college football is the hallmark of Saban’s tenure at Alabama.

Will the threat of his retirement eventually start to knock Alabama off its perch? Will his age force him to be 90 or 95 percent of the maniac he still is on the recruiting trail? Or will ever-increasing staff turnover start to take a toll?

And if Saban is considering retirement inside of five years, would he ever give out even a single hint, and allow the competition to get an edge?

Saban is more likely to hand off the program to a successor he feels will be able to maintain a high level, without much warning, like Bob Stoops did at Oklahoma.

Penn State’s Joe Paterno and Florida State’s Bobby Bowden coached until 85 and 80, respectively. But for various reasons, they overstayed their welcome, and were not producing their best seasons when they got pushed aside.

Don’t expect Saban to continue coaching if Alabama’s talent and on-field product were to appreciably slip.

“I would not want to do it if I didn’t feel like I could do a good job,” Saban said on The Paul Finebaum Show recently.

“If my health got bad, or if I felt like I was not able to keep up the pace and the program – I don’t want to ride the program down. We’ve worked hard to make Alabama something special, and as long as we’re capable of keeping it that way, I’m happy doing this.”

Saban’s health: Good for now

The recent surgery seemed like a good opportunity for those in the media to discuss and inquire about Saban’s overall health.

The man does not seem to age, delivering the same gusto at press conferences at 67 years old as he did when he arrived in Tuscaloosa at 55.

He plays golf and pick-up basketball. He remains hands-on in practice, especially with the defensive backs. He’s not watching practice from a tower, or ceding all responsibility to coordinators while serving as a CEO/program figurehead.

It seems as though Saban can keep churning for years to come. He framed his hip surgery as a way to ensure he can do just that.

But father time is undefeated. It’s hard to have the same energy approaching 70 years old as it is when you’re an 18-year-old college freshman. And it’s hard for the body as well.

It’s a fool’s errand to try and predict what impact, if any, aging will have on Saban the football coach in the coming seasons. But it will make an impact at some point in the future. Saban will not coach forever.

Saban’s legacy: Tied with Bryant

Most in the media already consider Saban to be the greatest college football coach of all-time.

He’s tied with Bryant for most national championships with six.

Considering the era in which he’s coaching, his recruiting prowess, his year-to-year consistency, his impact on the city of Tuscaloosa and the NFL pipeline he’s built, there’s a strong argument that Saban is the best ever to do it.

And he’s already got a statue in front of Bryant-Denny Stadium.

But there have been whispers among the media and those closest to Saban that indicate he cares about legacy. In other words, he wants seven (or eight, or nine) national championships. He’d probably like to get closer to 300 wins. He may enjoy not only surpassing Bryant’s record, but putting his legacy out of reach for any other challengers for decades to come.

What if the Tide win, say, 45 games and three national championships in the next four years?

Saban steadfastly has maintained he loves being part of a team, loves his relationships with players, and that each year’s challenge is what excites him, rather than his career numbers and records. But would that change if he got so far into a stratosphere of his own?

Saban’s personality

The coach likes to joke with the media about his work ethic and his inability to sit in front of the TV and relax all day.

He used his recovery from surgery, and inability to sit still, as the latest example of his drive.

“I lasted for 6 hours. They did the surgery on Monday night. I got home Tuesday morning at 9. I sat in a chair … at 3 o’clock, Miss Terry said she was taking the dogs to the lake, and I went outside and walked in the yard,” Saban told Finebaum last week.

“If this is what retirement is all about, don’t ever mention it, because I want no part of it.”

Takeaway: Saban’s end date at Alabama is total guesswork

Discussing Saban’s expiration date with the Crimson Tide elicits strong emotions from fans, media members, opposing programs and even Saban himself.

Now that we have actual betting odds, it’s fun to formulate an opinion. It can even be lucrative in the betting market if you’re right.

But it’s impossible at this point to predict when Saban will coach his last game at Alabama with any degree of certainty.

Saban has expressed he wants to continue coaching for “years to come.” His program remains the best in the country, along with Clemson. And he still recruits as well as anyone in college football.

Those things will come to an end one day. But that day seems reasonably far away.