TUSCALOOSA (AP) — Nick Saban’s coaching reign has come to an end. His dominance over college football, however, will forever linger in lore.

Saban, who won seven national championships — more than any major college football coach — and turned Alabama back into a national powerhouse that shattered an Associated Press poll record for most consecutive seasons at No. 1, announced his retirement Wednesday.

“The University of Alabama has been a very special place to Terry and me,” Saban said in a statement. “It is not just about how many games we won and lost, but it’s about the legacy and how we went about it. We always tried to do it the right way.”

Saban, 72, restored a Crimson Tide program once ruled by Paul “Bear” Bryant to the top of college football after taking over in 2007. As he stacked his wins, Saban’s celebrity status reached royalty levels in the state of Alabama.

For a time, he was the sport’s overlord and there was little that could be done to stop him.

Saban won six of his titles during his 17 seasons at Alabama. He won his first with LSU in 2003. His Tide teams were ranked No. 1 in the AP poll in a remarkable 15 straight seasons, breaking the old record of seven held by Miami.

Saban’s wife, Terry, posted about their “incredible run” at Alabama on the Facebook page for Nick’s Kids Foundation.

“We hope that the Saban legacy will be about helping others and making a positive difference in people’s lives as well as the winning tradition on the field,” Terry Saban wrote.

Saban’s tutelage helped launch the head coaching careers of Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Texas’ Steve Sarkisian and Mississippi’s Lane Kiffin, among others.

He finished just shy of the top in his final season, leading the Tide from a shaky start to a Southeastern Conference championship and back into the College Football Playoff before falling in overtime to Michigan in a semifinal game at the Rose Bowl.

Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne called him “one of the greatest coaches of all time, in any sport.”

Saban led the Tide to nine SEC championships and won his first national title at Alabama with a 14-0 season in 2009. Titles came again in 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2020. He also won the SEC with LSU in 2001 and 2003.

After a 7-6 debut in 2007, Saban won at least 10 games in his final 16 seasons.

It wasn’t until the rise of Dabo Swinney’s Clemson teams in the late 2010s and later Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs that any school could be considered a consistent threat to the Tide.

Saban has stepped away as the fabric of college football undergoes dramatic change. Colorado’s Deion Sanders, a coach who has sought to capitalize on the intervention of players profiting financially from their play on the field, said on social media “College Football just lost the GOAT.”

“WOW! I knew it would happen 1 day soon but not this soon,” he wrote. “The game has change so much that it chased the GOAT away. College football let’s hold up our mirrors and say HONESTLY what u see.”

Terry Saban addressed the changes to college football in her post, referencing her husband’s famed “process.”

“The rules for the game of football may change, but the ‘process’ will never go out of style: hard work, discipline, the relentless pursuit of a worthy goal, not cutting corners, and doing things the right way for the sake of constant personal improvement, not for the scoreboard,” she wrote.

Saban made a two-year foray into the NFL with the Miami Dolphins before returning to college to revive one of the nation’s most storied programs, which hadn’t won a national title in 15 years. Saban is 297-71-1 as a college head coach, with stops at Toledo, Michigan State and LSU. But Alabama is where he cemented his status as one of college football’s greatest coaches.

He coached Alabama’s first four Heisman Trophy winners and numerous NFL players, going 206-29, a winning clip of 87.7%. His teams produced 44 first-round draft picks, including last year’s No. 1 quarterback Bryce Young.

During that span, he also adapted to the changing times of up-tempo offenses, churning out high-scoring teams after winning with some of the nation’s best defenses, along with the new NIL and transfer rules.

He led Toledo to a Mid-American Conference championship in 1990, his lone season as that program’s coach. Saban worked as Bill Belichick’s defensive coordinator with the Cleveland Browns for four seasons before becoming the first Michigan State coach to lead his first three teams to bowl games.

“I think he’s the greatest coach in the history of football,” Michigan State basketball coach and longtime Saban friend Tom Izzo said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “There are a lot of great coaches, but what he’s done and the consistency that he did it — in an era where so many people and things are coming at you — is remarkable.”

Saban’s latest team dealt with plenty of adversity early, including a loss to Texas, but rebounded with the emergence of quarterback Jalen Milroe to upset then-No. 1 Georgia in the SEC championship game.

Saban didn’t sound like a coach looking to give up the job any time soon after the game. But it wasn’t a bad way to go, even without the title.

“This is one of the most amazing seasons in Alabama football history in terms of where this team came from, what they were able to accomplish and what they were able to do, winning the SEC championship, and really, really proud of this group,” he said. “I just wish that I could have done more as a coach to help them be successful and help them finish, and all we can do now is learn from the lessons that sometimes failings bring to us.”

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey feels Saban isn’t done entirely with college football.

“Knowing Nick? He’s not walking away from the game. He’s walking away from a role,” Sankey said.

DETROIT (AP) — U.S. consumers looking to get a tax credit on an electric vehicle purchase have fewer models to choose from under new rules that limit the countries where automakers can buy battery parts and minerals — a potential blow to efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions from autos.

The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law in 2022 expanded tax credits ranging from $3,750 to $7,500 for purchases of new and used EVs, an effort by the Biden administration to stoke demand toward its goal that half of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030. But qualifying for the credits depends on requirements related to their battery makeup and minerals that get tougher each year.

As of Jan. 1, new rules favor U.S. domestic materials and manufacture. The rules largely target battery components from nations “of concern” — mostly China, but also Russia, North Korea and Iran.

China dominates crucial parts of EV battery supply and production, even as automakers race to establish key mineral and components efforts elsewhere. As a result, only 13 of the more than 50 EVs on sale in the U.S. are eligible for the credits so far this year, down from about two dozen models that qualified in 2023.

The Tesla Model Y SUV, Chevrolet Bolt compact car and Rivian R1T pickup truck all still qualify. But even different trim levels and variants of the same model now qualify differently; certain Teslas are no longer eligible.

Neither are the Chevrolet Blazer SUV and the Cadillac Lyriq, from General Motors; the Ford Mustang Mach-E; or the Nissan Leaf.

Carmakers say they’re scrambling to source parts that will make their models eligible for tax credits, but those parts can’t be sourced overnight, especially as several automakers are chasing the same goal.

Some experts said they expect the reduced selection of tax-credit-eligible EVs to have only a passing impact on growing consumer acceptance, especially as car makers hustle to get their models qualified.

“There’s still enough variety out there in terms of vehicles. There are still the incentives that we’ll see from automakers as they balance their inventory. There are still automakers that are going to work their supply chains throughout the year to come back into the fold,” said Elizabeth Krear, vice president of J.D. Power’s EV practice. “This would be a near-term hiccup.”

One positive development for EV buyers this year is that qualifying vehicles can have the credits applied at the time of purchase, as long as the dealer fronts the cost. That means buyers can more easily afford the purchase. More than 8,700 U.S. dealers have signed up to do so, the Treasury Department said last week.

General Motors is also taking $7,500 off its models that lost eligibility, and other deals are available across the market — even as automakers continue to lose money on EVs.

And leased EVs aren’t affected by the new rules because they’re considered “commercial vehicles,” not subject to the same manufacturing and battery content requirements. That means consumers can get the full amount of the credit with a lease even if the vehicle wouldn’t qualify via a purchase. Industry experts and dealers expect another uptick in EV leasing, after its share of EV acquisitions doubled in 2023 to 26%, according to consumer intelligence firm J.D. Power.

Electric vehicle sales grew 47% to a record 1.19 million last year, but EV sales growth slowed toward the end of the year. In December, they rose 34%. Gas-electric hybrid sales grew 54% to 1.2 million last year, with market share leaping from 5.6% in 2022 to 7.7%.

The transportation sector accounts for about 29% of total U.S. emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. As the U.S. races to reduce its carbon footprint, it’s banking on consumers to adopt cleaner forms of personal transportation. EVs save significantly on emissions, said Jessika Trancik, a professor in energy studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Investments in electrification and charging infrastructure have stimulated EV purchases among early adopters, she said.

But affordability is a bigger concern for mainstream buyers than concerns about charging infrastructure, according to S&P Global Mobility. The average cost for a new gas-powered vehicle in the U.S. in November was $48,247, about $4,000 below an EV, according to Cox Automotive. That’s better than a year earlier, but still significant.

Trancik said buyers should consider total cost of ownership, which for an EV is generally less than that of a gas-powered counterpart due to savings on maintenance and fuel.

Christina Burns, a sales and marketing coordinator in Tulsa, Oklahoma, said she’ll be looking to buy a new vehicle later this year and would like to get something good for the environment. But due to uncertainty over tax credits, the higher upfront cost and concerns over charging, she’s planning on a hybrid or an efficient gas-powered vehicle rather than an EV.

“The most confusing thing would probably be the government part of it. Do you get a break, do you not? Will it apply next year, who knows?” she said. “You’re playing the odds as to whether the benefit will be there when you’re ready to purchase.”