Sports Illustrated: The NIL scene is evolving quickly. Collectives are popping up everywhere, distributing millions to athletes. What are your thoughts on this situation?
Nick Saban: The issue is, when you create those [collectives] for people, are you establishing a pay-for-play type of environment that can be used in recruiting? So now, all the sudden, guys are not going to school where they can create the most value for their future. Guys are going to school where they can make the most money. I don’t think that is even the best thing for the player.
You went to college. I went to college. Why were we going? We had goals and aspirations for how we wanted to create value for our future. Sometimes these things can be a distraction academically as well as athletically. But I’ll say it again: I think name, image and likeness is good for players. The whole concept of collectives is what has created this environment that we are in, and I’m not sure that anybody really had the insight or the vision to see that was going to happen. So therefore, we had no guidelines, and now we’re trying to develop some.
SI: So what is the solution to this in your mind?
NS: I don’t know that I completely have the answer to that. I think one of the things is everybody having a different state law. A lot of people blame the NCAA for a lot of this, but the NCAA sometimes gets caught. … Because of the changes we’ve had in what’s legal and not, they can’t enforce their own rules and they’re in a little bit of a dilemma, too.
Maybe it needs to be changed at the federal level so you don’t have different state laws and there are guidelines for what you can and can’t do. Players should create their opportunities, and what we’ve done now is some schools are creating opportunities for them. I don’t think that was the intent.
SI: There seems to be optimism around a federal bill from Tuberville and Manchin. You have close relationships with them both. What do you know about the bill?
NS: They are trying. I think they are making some progress, but there’s some people that … like [SEC commissioner] Greg Sankey and top athletic directors and commissioners, they understand the issues and they have spent a lot more time to try to input the best solutions.
I don’t think we realize sometimes what [universities] are all trying to do to help players—get an education, develop a career off the field, develop personal characteristics that are going to help them be successful in life, all these things we do to help them develop athletically. We invest a lot in that. That’s important for their future success.
We can improve the quality of life for players while they’re going to college, but it needs to be more.
One player should not be [earning] up here and another down here. It should be more equal. When you put these two things together—transfer whenever you want and the system we have now for name, image and likeness—you create a double-edged sword and you have people out there trying to get between the player and money who are trying to create a market.
Are you transferring to make more money, or are you transferring because it’s going to help you be more successful? The combination of those two things have really made it tough.
SI: How involved are you with Manchin and Tuberville’s legislative effort?
NS: I talk to them on occasion, but I’m not trying to spearhead a solution. I talk to Greg Sankey a lot. I talk to [SEC associate commissioner] William King. I hear the other coaches in our meetings. I’m just trying to help provide information to [the senators] so they know what the issues really are. I’m trying to also direct them to people I think can input the solution, like Greg Sankey and those kinds of people. Everybody needs to look at the issue from 1,000 feet. I don’t want to take opportunities away from players. I just think the mechanisms around how they get those opportunities need to be more standard for everyone.
SI: It seems like third parties—i.e., collectives—are taking donor dollars that might normally go to a school and then just siphoning them to players. Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a regulated system where a school could oversee that or even directly compensate players?
NS: Yeah, there probably is. I think that’s kind of what they do in the NFL. They have a collective bargaining agreement, a salary cap, and they share revenue with ownership. But now you’re going to make college students employees. That has issues that have to be sort of figured out. How does that get managed?
Dirtbags assemble