"The litigation is what got us to this point": Former Alabama HC Nick Saban wants Congress to help NCAA fix NIL
Nick Saban has sought intervention from Congress to fix the NIL system in college sports. In an interview with Fox Sports, he continued where he left off at the Senate roundtable on Tuesday and talked about how the system isn't working how it was supposed to.
To fix the problem, Saban suggested something like the antitrust laws that govern corporations.
“Now, we just have the state legislation, and every state is different, that would protect the NCAA from litigation once we establish guidelines for the future of college athletics.
"But the litigation is what got us to this point right now. We have to have some protection from litigation. I don't know if it's antitrust laws or whatever,” Saban told Bret Baier.
Saban also talked about replacing the current collective-driven system with a revenue-sharing model for the whole operation to work better. He gave the example of his former quarterback in Alabama, Bryce Young, who he said had a lot of national commercials that didn't come from the collective.
For Saban, NIL should help build an athlete’s brand. That's how he said the system was supposed to work but isn't at the moment.
Saban stepped down as the Alabama Crimson Tide head coach after spending 17 years in Tuscaloosa. His decision brought the curtains down on five decades of a coaching career that established him as one of the most successful college football coaches in the country.
Also read: "Rich will get richer and poor more poorer": Nick Saban accuses modern NIL-era of brewing "caste system" by degrading spirit of college football
Nick Saban wants his voice to bring meaningful change
In an earlier interview, Nick Saban believed that the current system of college football isn't college football at all. He went a step further by saying that student-athletes don't exist in today's time and he wants to use his voice to change that.
"If my voice can bring about some meaningful change, I want to help any way I can, because I love the players, and I love college football," Saban said.
Saban won seven national titles during his 28 years as a college head coach. Six of those came in his 17 seasons with Alabama, while another one came before that when he led the LSU Tigers to a win in 2003.
He has achieved a lot to be a voice that needs to be heard. Will the US Congress act as he suggests?
Also read: "I'm not really for collectives": Nick Saban drops blunt reaction on NIL collectives while providing alternate solution to aid funding