Pete Carroll, Nick Saban, Bill Belichick Combined - 85 Years, 918 wins, 7 Super Bowl Wins, 9 National Championships

Thoe two days will live in infamy.

From Wednesday, Jan. 10, through Thursday, Jan. 11, never have three more accomplished, legendary and future Hall of Fame head football coaches taken off their headphones over one 24-hour period. Never has there been a more titanic shift of Mount Rushmore coaches.

All three coach of Croatian descent also strangely saw their careers intertwine over the decades.

Early Wednesday afternoon, Seattle fired Pete Carroll. Later that afternoon, Nick Saban announced he was retiring from Alabama. And early Thursday, New England terminated Bill Belichick.

Carroll, 72, is not likely to coach again and will remain as an advisor with the Seahawks. Saban, 72, does not plan to coach again and is expected to remain with the Tide in an advisory role. Belichick, 71, is expected to coach in the NFL again somewhere as his NFL win total of 333 trails all-time leader Don Shula's 347 by just 14.

Combined, Carroll, Saban and Belichick have been head coaches for 85 seasons - with Carroll and Saban at 26 and 30, respectively, in both college and the NFL, and Belichick with 29 all in the NFL.

They are 215 years old together. They have combined for 918 wins with Belichick ahead at 333. Saban is next at 307 in college and pro, and Carroll has 278 in college and pro.

Together, they have won 16 ultimate championships as head coaches - seven Super Bowls and nine national championships.

Fired Seattle coach Pete Carroll grew emotional at his goodbye press conference on Wednesday. (Photo by Alika Jenner/Getty Images)

Saban won seven national championships - one with LSU in the 2003 season and six with Alabama from 2009-20. Belichick has won six Super Bowls with New England from the 2001 season through the 2018 campaign. Carroll is one of three coaches to win a national championship and a Super Bowl along with Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Carroll won national titles as USC's coach in 2003 (shared with Saban) and in '04. He won a Super Bowl as Seattle's coach in the 2013 season.

Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll Recognized Father Time

"I'm about as old as you can get in this business," Carroll, a native of the San Francisco area, said at a news conference Wednesday, inadvertently speaking for all three. "There's coming a time they've got to make some decisions."

Saban, a native of Monongah, West Virginia, spoke to ESPN's Rece Davis on Thursday.

"It was a difficult decision because it impacts and influences the lives of so many people," Saban said. And it came down to the wire as in so many games Saban has won, and lost.

"We had a meeting at 4 p.m. It was 3:55," he said. "I was sitting in my chair, looking at the clock, saying, 'You’ve got five minutes to decide which speech you’re going to give.' I was actually talking to Mrs. Terry (Saban) right up until that time."

Mrs. Saban has not called the plays, but let's say she is usually very close to the headphones. 

Alabama Coach Nick Saban Couldn't Commit To It

"Can you do it the way you’ve always done it, and be able to sustain it, and do it for the entire season? And if I couldn’t make the commitment to do that in the future the way I have to do it, I thought maybe this was the right time based on those two sets of circumstances," Nick Saban said.

Bill Belichick was born in Nashville in 1952 when his father Steve Belichick coached the secondary at Vanderbilt. Belichick mainly grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, where his dad coached the secondary at Navy.

"Haven't seen this many cameras since we signed (Tim) Tebow," Belichick said in extremely rare form - actually telling a joke - and continued in non-Belichick fashion.

"Robert Kraft (New England owner) and I, after a series of discussions, have mutually agreed to part ways. For me, this is a day of gratitude and celebration," he said, using two words he perhaps never has, even after winning half a dozen Super Bowls.

And just like that, all three were gone ... for now. And interestingly, the trio's careers all crossed paths, literally.

Nick Saban won seven national championships as Alabama's coach from the 2009 season through the 2020 season and reached the championship game three other times before losing. (Getty Images)

When Saban became a defensive backs coach at Ohio State under Earle Bruce in 1980, he replaced Carroll, who had taken the defensive coordinator job at North Carolina State.

Nick Saban Reconsidered Coaching After Firing In 1981

On the morning after the 1981 season ended with a 31-28 win over Navy in the Liberty Bowl, Bruce became the first and last person in history to fire Nick Saban. Bruce did not like the way the defense played in that game and throughout the season as it allowed more than 200 points. That had happened only once before in Ohio State history. Bruce also fired one of Saban's best friends, defensive coordinator Denny Fryzell, along with defensive line coach Steve Szabo.

"It was embarrassing," Saban told me while LSU's coach. "It wasn't really fair to any of us. We did a good job with what we had. That was the only time I thought about getting out of coaching."

Until this past season, that is.

"Was it worth it? The insecurity? The moves? The politics? I questioned not only my career choice, but my abilities as well," Saban says in the first book about him, "How Good Do You Want To Be?" with Brian Curtis that published in 2005. "I had failed. I was devastated and humiliated."

But Saban stuck to it and got a job as a defensive back coach at Navy under Gary Tranquill before the 1982 season. The defensive backs coach there was Steve Belichick. His son Bill Belichick was the linebackers coach with the New York Giants at the time. Belichick soon told Bill that Saban was one of the brightest coaches he had ever been around.

Bill Belichick, Nick Saban Became Fast Friends In The 1980s

Saban and Belichick met soon through the elder Belichick and became fast friends. Belichick got Saban his first NFL job as an assistant with the Houston Oilers in 1988 with one phone call. Belichick and Saban got together secretly after that to watch film together in the off-season. Secretly, because they were on opposing NFL teams. Belichick appreciated Saban as much as his dad did. When Belichick got his first NFL head coaching job with Cleveland in 1991, he made Saban his defensive coordinator.

After Cleveland fired Belichick following the 1995 season, he landed as the secondary coach at New England under Bill Parcells for the 1996 season. He followed Parcells to the New York Jets as defensive coordinator. And there was Carroll again. He replaced Parcells as New England's head coach in 1997.

When Kraft fired Pete Carroll as the Patriots' head coach after the 1999 season, he replaced him with - yep - Bill Belichick. And the rest is history.

Former New England head coach Bill Belichick has won six Super Bowls - more than any coach in NFL history. (Photo by Winslow Townson/Getty Images)

Saban and Carroll crossed paths again after the 2003 season on the awards circuit and at the White House. Both LSU and USC were honored by President George W. Bush in March of 2004 as national co-champions in the 2003 season.

"Pete Carroll and Nick Saban are two of the greatest coaches in the United States," Bush said. "We're glad you're here. There was quite a lot of discussion about who really was number one. My attitude is the South Lawn is a pretty good size."

And in the second week of January, 2024, legendary coaches Pete Carroll, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick crossed paths yet again - in the portal to the next stages of their lives.