"This is not professional sports" - Alabama coach Nick Saban hits out at NIL for monetizing college football
Nick Saban has captured the sports world's imagination with his comments about some opposing universities who have been snagging the sort of five-star recruits that Alabama monopolizes every cycle, landing Class of 2022 recruits via nefarious means. His latest comments to ESPN's Chris Low—which also included an apology for his recent callouts of professional peers—indicate that he believes the game is headed in the wrong direction.
And which way would that be, you might ask? A watered-down version of the NFL, with academic institutions competing financially for teenagers in a free agency-like collective pursuit.
Saban said:
"This is not professional sports. I mean, we have free agency and no salary cap. That's basically what we have, right? There's no professional league that has that circumstance because none of them are stupid enough to have it, and that's what we have."
Nick Saban targeted Jimbo Fisher and Deion Sanders in his NIL attacks
Nick Saban spoke to a panel of wealthy Alabama figureheads on a 'World Games' panel in Birmingham Wednesday afternoon and let loose his personal attacks on a former assistant and Aflac commercial campaign co-star Jimbo Fisher.
"It's gotten completely out of control and [it's] not a sustainable model. It's to the point where you've got these attorneys, agents calling collectives and saying, 'Pay my player a hundred thousand dollars a year,' and then they want their piece of that. They all want a cut."
Saban: We were 2nd in recruiting last year. A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player. But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to sustain that in the future because more and more people are doing it twitter.com/mikerodak/stat…
Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher and Jackson State head coach Deion Sanders, two formerly close confidants that the Crimson Tide coach was seemingly outing, caught the accusatory smoke from Saban.
This has since elicited viral responses from both Fisher and 'Prime Time.'
I said what I said, now God Bless & let’s dominate Today!
andscape.com/features/deion…
Here's how Sanders responded:
“I don’t even wear a watch and I know what time it is. They forget I know who’s been bringing the bag and dropping it off. I know this stuff. I’m not the one you want to play with when it comes to all of this stuff.”
Fisher and Sanders are not turning the other cheek to the seven-time NCAAF National Championship coach's remarks. Where this could lead is an exciting storyline to monitor.
Texas A&M athletics director Ross Bjork believes Saban violated SEC sportsmanship bylaws and condemned the comments as a 'personal attack.' Bjork suggested that Nick Saban is merely lashing out because he feels threatened by SEC rival head coach Jimbo Fisher's success on the recruiting trail.