Saban comments on the state of college sports [edited]

I think most agree that it's heading in the wrong direction until some new system gets put into place. The message would probably be better received if it came from someone who didn't bend/break so many of the previous rules.  Kind of like Urban Meyer teaching a course on ethics.

The NIL era is exactly what the Fab Five wanted.  How's that working out?

I think it's interesting that Congress invites Saban, a name every casual fan knows as a great coach and every hardcore fan knows as an unrepented bagman devotee instead of someone like our old basketball HC Beilein,  who hardly any casual fan would know but every hardcore fan recognizes as being the patron saint of rule following.  If they were serious about what college sports has turned into they should've invited somebody trying to follow the rules, not somebody mad that it's now ok for everyone to break them thereby eliminating his competitive advantadge in gathering talent.

Like almost everything done in Congress these days this was done for show, not go.

One could easily argue Saban was the ace of college football. Maybe the est college football coach ever. 

And he's forever changed.

I respect what Saban was able to accomplish - his record as a coach is unrivaled. I understand his complaints about the attitude change in the college athletes he was coaching; most importantly, I really enjoyed the last game he coached, especially that last play, 4th and goal, OT. It could not have been sweeter.

took a while to parse this one

1) Hard for me to take it as seriously as I would w Grayson Allen next to saban

2) That sound bite highlights how much things have changed. Now he knows what recruits felt like after in-home visits when the parents would remind them that coaches just care about how much they can make off you. 
 

3) NIL itself isnt the issue. The issue is the fact that the NCAA had years to do the right thing, fought tooth and nail against progress and equity, then only cobbled together some guidelines after the Supreme Court had a gun their their heads the same way I used scribble some shit down seconds before my homework was due. The collectives are the issue and that’s on the NCAA. This NIL collective model isn’t sustainable. We’re crowdsourcing paychecks for players at the detriment of programs. Donations that went to athletic departments are funneled to specific players. Regular fans are literally paying in hopes that their favorite players come back for another year. Resentment will grow to new levels when those players don’t perform because we won’t feel like we got a return on our monetary investment. And the highs of winning with players you personally paid for will diminish with each ring. 

It’s more dangerous than pro sports because we don’t pay out of pocket to keep Jared Goff in Detroit or to sign free agents. Could you imagine if we had this model here in the NFL? If y’all paid Stafford to win 0 playoff games in Detroit? I’d have a tough time believing he’d have the same love that he has now. 

its a recipe for disaster given young people (often with limited informed counsel), contract-free negotiations, crazy transfer rules, sharks circling, etc.

i cant think of many that object to student athletes earning on NIL, they just disagree with the current setup.  i cant imagine going to 3-4 schools in as many yrs.

they need to build guardrails before the current system implodes.  top athletes will always get paid.  the great change is the rest of the kids being given license to earn during college years

So is this going to be deleted as well??

Listen, I get that college athletics have changed but Nick Saban whining before Congress that all the stuff he used to get away with is now legal and he can't keep pace is obnoxious.  His last 5 years at Alabama featured, per recruiting rankings, the most talented group of players on a team in history.  He got paid millions of dollars to coach a bunch of (until quite recently) unpaid amateur college students so that they could generate billions of dollars for other people and some of the richest institutions in the world.  So fucking save me this "NIL changed everything I know, a multi-millionaire who got paid tons of money to coach college football."  Saban is a great football coach but he rarely, if ever, spoke out of the interests of college athletics in general until it was convenient for him, and usually even then it was with extreme restraint.  I don't agree with Harbaugh on a lot of things but he put his neck out there and spoke out for changes even if they didn't directly benefit him, and he's been doing it for a long time.

So yeah, fuck Saban and his come-to-Jesus media tour that's 100% because he's going to get even more money to pontificate about sports on Gameday in between segments where Herbstreit salivates over OSU and Mat McAfee does something stupid.

I think Joel Klatt spent about 15 minutes of his program on Monday - March 11th - touching on this subject.

IMO - Saban was "fine" with the old system.  Bama had perfected brown bagging - and, it wasn't until A&M used NIL to sign a #1 class that Saban complained.

Oh - remember when Saban talked about not scheduling FCS teams for P5 conferences - and premiere teams like Bama?   All Saban had to do was send a text message or call the Bama AD and say - "Hey, let's drop these FCS teams off of our schedule the week prior to the Auburn game - and, replace it with either an SEC game or P5 OOC opponent."    Let me check - that never happened, did it.   

Bama's dangerous OOC schedule includes Mercer this year - and Eastern Illinois in the '25 season.  Both of those two opponents will travel to Tuscaloosa in November.

While I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to be part of the shitshow that is college football right now…

NICK SABAN saying “paying players is ruining the game” is a level of hypocrisy I’m not willing to stomach.

The NCAA deserved to be fired into the sun, and the players deserved to make money based off revenue they produced.

As a fan, I feel like everything I loved about college football will be gone within the next couple years.

There is no right answer right now

Barstool. Saban. Smug partisan politician guy with ridiculous facial flow. Gross. All of it. 

1) The interesting thing is not Saban. The interesting thing is the roundtable and Congress’ potential involvement.

2) But since we’re on Saban, I don’t understand this weird crusade he is on. I know Craig Ross agreed with Saban (recent TKA roundtable) that it’s impossible to pay people and foster a good culture, but it can be done. Maybe it’s a different challenge than Saban was used to (paying above the table, that is), but many places of business manage. His perception that when players ask about money that means it’s their only priority…did he work at Alabama for free? Didn’t think so.

For the hundredth time, Saban is not actually adding anything meaningful to this conversation.

Man, MGoCommunity has a seriously insatiable hard-on for this old guy.

He's not a coach anymore, yet I've heard more about this guy as a non-coach than any other time before Michigan ended his career.

How many times do we have to hear this delusional revisionist wail about the state of affairs he helped create?  Even if he's right, there are unretired people saying the same things who aren't hypocrites.

I'm quite disappointed in the comments here.

Not a single MGoBlogger has noted the "real difference" about Nick Saban's recent employer.

So, what was that difference?   Their College of Engineering - or, so I've been told.

Brown Bagging - Chargers or Challengers - etc. - really had nothing to do with his record Signing Classes and roster - it was always  their College of Engineering.

March Madness will have good ratings and be really fun like it is every year.  
 

Just sucks that we have a clown coach who can’t get us there 

The lace is forever changed. But that's only because one broke.

Hearing Saban complain about this is like listening to OJ Simpson complain about the loopholes in the justice system. 

Saban isn't wrong on much but the whining because other teams have good players and coaching is non-stop.

You can be right and a hypocrite at the same time

Not a huge Saban fan, but his comments helped me have an epiphany in understanding some of the reasons Harbaugh went NFL.  I am college sports biased and have always had the opinion that being the head coach of one of the premier college programs was the apex of the football coaching world.  After you have had some success at programs like Michigan, Alabama, TSDS, etc you would be fundamentally a deity around town and have all the trappings you could want. To the biggest trade off was balancing the vissitudes of recruiting 16 and 17 year olds and their whims, against the motivating and corralling the views of a bunch of millionaires.  Now with NIL etc you trying to deal with the whims of 16 to 17 year male millionaires.  That much money in the hands of arguably the least responsible demographic in the population would be living hell

Brown Jug Bad. Brown Bag Good. Sage advice Satan.

I know we all have to support the players and whatnot. They should get their money and good for them. It definitely has made the sports worse though. NIL and the transfer portal make it way worse as a fan and I know that's not popular to say.

This kind of rhetoric coming from Saban only galvanizes my getting on board with the way things are currently - imperfect as they are. I do think college football is diluting its brand which is more of a long term concern. 

The NCAA had 25 to 30 years to put in some sort of revenue sharing program with the athletes with controls in place.  They blatantly refused and held on to the bullshit "amateur" model to the point of actually arguing it in front of the Supreme Court thinking they would win.

What's going on right now is their comeuppance.

You know what doesn't help me want to believe anything Saban says? It's the fact the guy never makes eye contact. It's just fucking weird. It's like he's afraid someone will look in his soul and not see anything. 

Aww poor NICK'I

I didn't know we were adding another state. Sounds like a cool state. 

I'm sorry, but it's hard to take Saban's comments seriously when his dynasty was built off of paying players under the table and cheating in a system where paying players wasn't allowed. While I think the current NIL landscape does need regulation, Saban getting on his high horse and acting righteous as soon as the system stopped benefiting him is not the person I want to listen to

Sounds like he is preparing Alabama fans for a world in which the Tide aren't winning.  

Most of this is old man shakes fist at clouds stuff. Just go to a vacation, let it breathe, you had a great career and overcame the severe disability of once being a sparty. There is no need to enter the takes economy. If this is what we can expect from his media career in future that'll be a no from me dawg

I would argue that college athletics changed when cable companies started paying billions to the NCAA and conferences and coaches became multimillionaires.  Now the players are asking for a piece of the pie and everyone is losing their mind.  I’m not buying it.  The transfer rules are at the heart of this issue.  All these problems don’t necessarily come from kids making money, it comes from kids being able to leave and go to the highest bidder or get more playtime.  Which I understand and don’t fault a place for doing it.  The coaches can pack up and leave whenever, the players should have that option as well. I’m torn on this issue as it is eroding away at college athletics.  NIL could come with a contract that would require you to stay at that program for an agreed upon time.  Similar to NLI.  The amount of money in college sports is insane at this point.  Something needs to done as a whole and not just to the athletes.