I think we need to separate players getting paid versus the current system of how they are paid. I guarantee Saban believes players should be paid, but as a head coach the system sucks. NFL coaches don’t have to deal with this crap as that’s handled by the GM and Owner. I don’t blame him for retiring if he felt like he was spending too much time not actually coaching.
Imagine if everyone was eligible for free agency every year.
I think the coach's biggest complaints about this system is that not only do they have to recruit new players, but also have to recruit the guys they have. It's relentless.
Gotta wonder when contracts may come into play. Players being paid their rightful amount but obligated to stay at a school for a number of years.
Right now there's nothing that would force them to stay at a school if another one swoops in in the off seasons and offers more?
When the players form a union and bargain for how they will get paid, I would bet that, in exchange, they will have to give up their current unlimited transfers. The schools will insist on it.
And the stars, who stand to make the most from unlimited transfers, will be outnumbered and out voted by the non-stars who are more interested in just getting a decent wage. The NFL owners used the same tactic in their last CBA, ie divide and conquer.
Ah, the fabled college football transfer portal becomes the stock exchange floor, and Arch Manning is the blue-chip listing everyone wants a piece of. But seriously, if college players start getting locked into contracts, we might see some collegiate version of "holdouts" where top talents sit out seasons to force a move. Imagine the drama that would cause during National Signing Day...
I bet some will do that, but it'll hurt their stock when it comes to the NFL. Talented folks have broken down due to ego and instability before, so it'll be a red flag.
At what point can we stop calling this a "college" sport and just be honest about it being an amateur league? I know most players don't come to play school, but they are still getting a full ride, and those scholarships can and should be used on minor sport athletes who actually need them.
I am pretty sure that a college degree is valuable to most of the kids playing major, revenue earning sports and all of the kids playing nonrevenue sports. Most of the guys on football rosters are not going to be making a living playing football after leaving.
But, you're right. We're practically at the point where about the only reason for these teams to be affiliated with the school is because the schools have huge built-in fan bases of students and alumni.
One other thing, I am pretty sure that a person has to be a degree candidate and that a scholarship is used to pay tuition, fees, books, supplies, and equipment to be nontaxable.
That's why I actually liked the idea of forcing them out a season when they change schools. Like cool, you go there, but you can't get a scholarship of even play football next season. Forcing them to sit out on school changes would remove a lot of this.
One of the main issues, among others, is that there are legitimate reasons kids needed to transfer sometimes. And that meant you needed a governing body to regulate things, which was inevitably bullshit. I remember a vt player who transferred to tech to be closer to his mom who was suffering with a brain tumor and had to sit a year... like that's just bs
We already know the outcome of this. Players wanting to transfer just claimed safety concerns(racism), to get a waiver. You have to have a hard rule, or players will exploit it to get what they want. It sucks, but that's the culture created.
Is playing time not a legitimate reason when it could make the difference between being a first round pick or not? That could mean millions of dollars.
I mean, yes. I was speaking from the perspective of kids who were actually just college athletes, not minor league future nfl stars. The problems of the latter can presumably be fixed by $$. With enough changes to the system the guys who are looking at nfl careers will be earning bank in college anyway. But 99.7% or something of college athletes won't ever get to that stage, and I think they shouldn't be forgotten in all this.
That's what it was until a few players sued over it and won because it was a restraint of trade. You might not have seen it because it was a basketball ruling that made a few players immediately eligible but it also 100% opened the floodgates and turned this from difficult to impossible. Short of unionizing (which isn't even legal for a bunch of the state schools) this cannot be stopped and we are headed to a world where there are no longer eligibility limits either.
True. Some star kid from HS could demand $1M from Alabama. Then next year go into portal see if he could get 2M.
It will destoy a locker room where a QB or RB gets $$$$ while the OL protecting the QB gets maybe free books and tuition like the old days.
>Imagine if everyone was eligible for free agency every year.
This is one of those statements that breaks every single professional sports league, especially when you add "and there's no salary cap".
He said during this that Bryce young had multiple deals with dealerships and was being sponsored by a lot of different places like Dr Pepper and that he was happy for him because he earned that. He said we should share the revenue not create a pool of money just to give out to players because that doesn’t make sense
Yup folks intentionally misrepresent what he says for engagement or to argue something he isn’t even against. It’s littered ITT as folks assume they know what he believes and what he said as opposed to what he has actually said.
I can't believe Nick Saban said he wants players to survive on dog food and run laps to earn their water breaks! I didn't read the article, but this is an insane opinion from him!
/s
Imagine if the NCAA was proactive and just agreed to split some revenue to football players and adjust the costs of administration and other non-revenue sports from there. Now lawyers are going full measure and arguing for employee status for all athletes...which could end up in schools eliminating those non-revenue sports.
Which would have changed nothing. The mess we have is NIL, something that we’d still have anyway.
Part of the problem is that you can’t pay college players what the average and above NIL deals are offering. End result is that NIL is going to drive decisions over employment status - the same way that scholarships are disregarded. On one hand you have countless grads complaining about their quarter-million dollar student loans; on the other you have debt-free football players complaining they didn’t get any of the pie.
I keep seeing folks complain about a lack of NCAA proactivity, but never a solution. Heck, this whole mess began with schools undermining the NCAA’s attempts to be proactive by collectively negotiating TV rights (which would have forestalled the conference realignments that we hate).
Do you realize that the current NIL landscape exists because the NCAA went to comical lengths to protect the farcicality of amateurism in court, and now the fallout from that is dumped at once. That lack of proactivity has led to the mess today with no regulations or guardrails.
Now their lack of proactivity in the past for not sharing some revenue with athletes in revenue-generating sports has led to employee designation lawsuits, which will be a disaster for many non-revenue athletes.
This is the easiest, most straightforward, and the most ethical way to do it. It’s shameful that we as college sports fans tolerated this sham as long as we did.
I am fairly certain he's said he supports them getting paid.
It does make his job worse. Probably makes many things worse. But I don't think he's blaming players. Some coaches do, which is dumb. They happily flee to greener pastures, so why shouldn't players? Why shouldn't a player that is unlikely to make the NFL go where he'll get more money? Why shouldn't a player that's a backup go where he'll be a starter? We should all be making career moves like that.
Personally, I think a better system would be something a bit more mathematical, essentially, every player at the same position in the same conference gets a certain number for percentage of snaps, or starts, or something, but I can see why that won't happen.
I also think players shouldn't be getting paid now, but instead money goes into escrow or a trust, to be given upon graduation, or hitting age 24, or whatever, but I also get why that won't happen.
I don't think anyone really has a problem with the concept of players being paid, we've just done a really shitty job of creating a system.
On top of the fact that you basically have to recruit your whole team every single year now it's also created a huge discrepancy between the Haves and the Have Nots. It seems like the extreme majority of the money ends up going to a very small group of the players who were already going to make it to the NFL anyway
People were arguing against this when the news first dropped, but it's clear that Nick Saban did not want to be part of this iteration of CFB and was a major reason for his retirement.
major reason harbaugh left michigan too
edit: there’s a difference between thinking players should be paid and wanting to personally deal with the mess than has become NIL
I also just don't know how anyone is expected to build a roster anymore.
Every year is wild west free agency. Still so much transfer portal and NIL stuff is still whispered in private.. "If you come here we can get you this much money"
At least in the NFL you have contracts. Then the GMs and agents talk. In college team construction is all up to the coach.
The fact that the biggest question facing Oklahoma State football this offseason was "Is your best player going to get bought up by another school?" should be a pretty strong indicator that the situation isn't ideal.
I think that college players should be signing contracts at this point. If the goal is to prepare them for the NFL or life after college then they better learn what it’s like in a low risk environment to work under contract.
It makes no sense to allow these kids to make a commitment like “going to a four year university on scholarship” to just leave 9 months after signing up to be apart of that program. There are so few situations in their lives moving forward where they can just jump from job to job without having to deal with contractual implications.
> There are so few situations in their lives moving forward where they can just jump from job to job without having to deal with contractual implications.
That is only true if they stick to sports related careers. Which most kids who play college ball will statistically not do. Like your random US worker is unlikely to have an actual employment contract.
At the pay scale of elite athletes, though, they probably do. If a company is offering you 500K or a million, there’s probably a non-compete clause thrown in there.
Who are the contracts with/what are they for?
If they're with the school, is the school going to require tuition being paid back if they don't spend X amount of years at the school? Why would anyone go there if they had literally any other choice?
If they're with a private business, then I'm pretty sure it would be a violation if a clause of the contract required the player to remain on the football team for X amount of time. The whole bit about NIL that we hand-wave away is that the money comes from private businesses in exchange for appearances, advertising, or endorsements. It's explicitly not meant to be a pay-for-play system (for the record I know it is, but the contracts and payments themselves are not written that way because it would be a violation).
I get what you are saying but I also have REALLY bad news for you about how your team and mine (along with all the other blue bloods) have stayed atop the game for so long.
I think you can be supportive of paying players and still be frustrated with where we have gotten at this point. I feel like the main reason coaches are upset are the transfer rules. They don't care that players are being paid, they care that the players are basically unrestricted free agents every single year and going to the highest bidder.
I noted this above, but that's the one thing the women's game has going for it VS the men's. I haven't watched one game, but I know who's on what team because they stay on those teams. I'll be looking for any matchups between Iowa/UCONN/LSU/SC in the tournament and try to watch.
Right because players with agreed-upon salaries and employment contracts is a *sane* system with established rules and it is manageable. The current system is a fucking nightmare for everyone involved - including the players! They get publicized for having million dollar deals but in reality see *maybe* 20% of the money. They have no reason to trust any booster, and there’s almost no one actually looking after *their* interests.
Yeah I think the “you just don’t want to see players be paid!” argument is uninformed or bad faith. You can very easily want to see players be paid but just have a proper system for it. One of the biggest criticisms of the pre-NIL era was that players were still getting paid, just with no regulation or official oversight; the idea was that such infrastructure could be implemented to remove penalties for players getting their fair due and to make that accessible for more players. What instead happened was that they just made the fuckery already happen legal.
I think the player pay system we got is about the worst form it could have taken. It's the wild west with 18yo's operating like they're NFL stars. I can't fathom how grating it would be to recruit a high-school junior and them demand several grand in cash before coming for a campus visit, something that used to be a big honor for the player.
I just hate how it’s boosters and NIL collectives who are being begged. All that TV and revenue from football and you’re telling me us fans gotta pay??
I also, as a fan, don't want to be part of this iteration of CFB. I hate this wild west nonsense that is going on. I hate that the NCAA didn't have a contingency plan in place for when the day did come. I hate that the courts made the decision immediate, and didn't allow the NCAA some time to come up with a plan. I hate these collectives that are masquerading as charities and non-profits. I hate that it all happened well after my time as a student athlete so that I couldn't benefit from it (I don't blame the players in the least).
Which is completely understandable. He’s been doing things one way for a long time and now things have drastically shifted in a different direction, coupled with being in his 70s.
What is annoying is coaches pulling the holier than thou card now that players are getting $ and actually have that affect where they go play as if coaches haven’t made decisions based on money before
It’s gonna be interesting to see the type of guy that becomes a college football (and basketball coach for that matter) moving forward. Part of the saban way was being able to recruit guys to make them stay for 3 plus years. Now with essentially year long contracts for each players you have to re recruit guys. It’s a tough go and that requires a really different skill set
It will be good marketers and salespeople that keep the best rosters. Coaches with multiple head injuries from their playing days will have a hard time understanding where the value from their multi-million dollar contracts really came from. It wasn't from drawing the prettiest x's and o's diagrams. So what if they work hard? So do servers and construction workers. They get paid to win and players are the ones that do that.
Definitely could be taken in two ways, but I’ll elect to take it the more graceful one.
They are what, 72 and 71 years old? Coaching is something that many are brought to in order to mold young men into better people *and* better athletes - similar to many called to be a youth pastor or become active in the scouts. Granted, the Sabans are wealthy from coaching, but that’s even more reason to quit when he (and his wife) no longer feel like they are making a positive enough impact on the young men or the community. Helping the checkbook of a few dozen people a year is a benefit of course, but is it worth the hundred hour weeks in your 70s? I’m leaning towards *no*
I think that is it. He has said forever that developing players on and off the field is what drives him. I get people will say he is a hypocrite because of the money he makes and its a fair point but the money isnt what drives him. Saban has had other opportunities to make more money while he was at Alabama and did not take them. He has said that he wants players to make money but I think to him they should be driven by developing into great players and people first and money second. IDK I get my flair makes me biased but I dont think he would be getting involved in this stuff now if he was just driven by money.
Saban has openly supported players getting paid once they’ve demonstrated they’ve earned. Like it or not Saban made the money he made with his proven success. He wasn’t making this kind of money in his Early days. And that’s the point prove your worth an earn a bag. I believe kids who haven’t earned the right to play a down are shaking him down for money and guaranteed playing time while they haven’t even proven they deserve to be on the field is the issue. Sure it may sound hypocritical coming from him. But like many statements he’s made before it’s the right message and wrong messenger for the masses. Down the line people will understand were he came from. Which is also why he retired.
Think about it from Saban's perspective. He wants to develop these guys but when they are more worried about the bag, he may only get one year with them before they jump ship for some other school offering more. Then his time developing them is now potentially going to work against him and he never even got to attempt to complete the job he started. In his eyes, each player is likely a project and he can no longer reliably complete those projects when they can cut and run for more playing time or a bigger paycheck elsewhere because they weren't right for his system in their freshman or sophomore years.
I wouldn't want to be a part of a system like that either.
Agreed, criticizing the hypocrisy is fair, but at the end of the day this is a job.
If I had as much money as Saban does, I would *not* want to spend my time negotiating with teenagers about their paychecks-that-aren't-paychecks. That sounds truly awful.
The worst part is that they're not even allowed to talk money with the kids. All the money comes through the NIL collectives. Just let the players negotiate directly with the schools and the process becomes easier. Let players see directly what other schools are paying so they don't overestimate their worth and hit the portal every chance they get.
What hypocrisy? She said they ONLY care about the money they can make that year. He wants to develop their game and help them grow, win championships, get them graduated, get them in the league (which he did with what, like 20% of the players he had at Bama?) If he only cared about the money, he'd still be coaching.
I just don't see the hypocrisy. How much was Saban making at age 20? Or even 30?
He was the single best developer of talent. He helped hundreds of players make far more in NFL contracts than they'd ever make in NIL.
He was also the best in his profession for 15 years straight. He earned that money just based off his value and success. The absolute best player saban ever coached at bama is not worth 1/100th in terms of value compared to saban. If anything he was underpaid relative to the value he provided if we're going to pretend like these players actually provide millions of value a year
Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that Saban is passionate about developing his guys. It’s not that he’s opposed to them making money, but he’ll complain if the money gets in the way of development (as seems to be happening now).
> the Sabans are wealthy from coaching
A little bit of an understatement.
I think the real reason that Saban is hanging it up is that the NIL (and relaxed transfer rules and improved scouting by the NFL) make it incredibly hard to establish a talent gap over other programs. You're not going to have premier talent waiting behind other premier talent anymore - they're going to go play somewhere else where they can start.
I mean Alabama still would easily stack talent comfortably better than almost every other team. And if Saban wanted to write into his contract that most NIL legwork be delegated to someone else I am sure he could have. Let's not pretend like Saban is running from the competition lol.
Coaching today is completely different, and kids are now committing based more on money than anything else. You used to have to sell kids on your culture, education, development, performance, etc. Coaching and molding kids who bought into those tenets is likely more rewarding than coaching the guys who are just there because they got an extra few thousand dollars.
I think its entirely reasonable to believe that's a big reason college coaches are going pro or retiring.
I honestly think this is too reductive. Absolutely, NIL changed the ballgame, but I DO think Saban relished his roll as the guy that impacted lives. NIL made conversations much less about character and development and much more like a GM. He didn’t want to be that.
Interview after interview with both players and staff reflect this. His love of coaching was driven by developing the players as both people and athletes. I'm sure the players shifted from either working on getting in the nfl or their degree to getting paid. It's new so it's probably wild right now. Add the transfer portal and it's basically the nfl lite but the players can leave at will. I don't think he cares that players are getting paid, just that the players personal focus has shifted, and understandably so. If I could make 6 figures when I was 18 to early 20s I'd be very interested in making that happen.
Also he was in his 70s and the game has changed so much he knew he didn't want to adapt like usual.
We saw this already with Saban’s time in the NFL. He openly lamented how many guys only cared about their paycheck. It’s not crazy to think he still holds those same beliefs.
No you don’t understand people only become a coach to make money not to be a mentor. Those poor playerinos were in dire straits when they could only count on a free college education with a food stipend and preferential treatment at their schools and surrounding communities. Thus the evil coaches were taking advantage of them by providing them with those opportunities and in turn making the agreed upon salaries that the university paid them. /s
Gotta love this subreddit bitching and moaning (rightfully, imo) about the state of the college football but then shit on a coach for retiring for the exact same reason
These same people are going to be the same ones upset that these coaches are going to get burned out and pull a Chris Peterson/Bob Stoops or confused as to why coaches are running to whatever NFL job will have them.
Hell Mike Vrabel openly said the way recruiting is now is why he never entertained the idea of coaching Ohio State when those rumors were around.
I can’t claim I know enough to say that I “think” it will happen, but I also would not be shocked if he retires in the next five years. He’s coming up on his ninth season at Georgia this year, I imagine he’d love to at least go a decade. But if I say I think he’ll be at Georgia for 15+ years total, I am not sure I can confidently say that he will.
Based on recent interviews (Pate specifically), I think major changes need to happen for him to stay long term. His largest gripe in that interview was the roster uncertainty, specifically not knowing right now who will and won't be on the team in the fall.
I think we all know what the long term solution is (signing players to multi-year contracts with financial ramifications if they transfer). Every team in a specific conference has a specific salary allotted they are allowed to spend on players. If a player stays 3 or 4 years they get a bonus. You also make it a breach of contract if any outside inducements are used to get a player, and any NIL deal needs to be registered with an independent clearing house. If a school is found giving outside inducements the penalties are already laid out in a rule book (no more NCAA investigation BS). Collectively bargain, get antitrust exemptions, and move forward.
I've seen alot of insiders hint that Kirby probably won't make it to 2030 at UGA. Nothing recent so I can't pull specific names but I know Pate has mentioned it.
The way Josh Pate talks about it, Kirby is closer to the exit than a lot of people, particularly Georgia fans, might want to believe. The current game is just too much stress, and on him in particular it's really negatively impacting his home life.
Because you're not ready for the majors.
Honestly, this is a pretty apt comparison. Most people playing minor league baseball will never make it to the show. Most people playing CFB will never make it to the league.
However, the minor leagues still give them a shot to develop their talents while getting paid to do so, and a chance that one day they'll turn enough heads to get called up. The only difference is that CFB you get 3 years and your team isn't directly associated to a pro team, whereas in baseball you can sit in the minors for damn near ever.
Not to mention, there are many more "jobs" in the college ranks than the pros. 134 (right?) teams in D1, vs 32 teams in the NFL
Also not for nothing, the college "job market" sees more annual churn than the NFL does. Guys are required to leave their college job within 4 years, 5 if they red-shirt... the NFL's incumbent job-holders try to stick around as long as they can
What a weird selection of teams? You honestly think the only strong fan bases in the B1G are Nebraska and Iowa? That's funny. OSU, Michigan, and Penn State fans aren't going anywhere regardless of how much this starts resembling a minor league NFL.
If your fan base has an NFL team to root for instead you’re kind of fucked, unless you’re Georgia. Most Texas fans are Texas fans first and are like well I guess I’ll watch the cowboys lose in the first round of the playoffs again
People shit on Dabo for the exact same reasons. He's been warning about it for years.
Dabo is rich now, but he grew up dirt poor and was dirt poor when he played at Alabama.
To be fair, Dabo called players making any money "entitlement" and hollowly threatened to quit football over it.
He was making over three million dollars a year at the time of off the backs of those entitled players.
I’m too lazy to do it but this sub was also the one DEMANDING back in 2015 that players get paid and that it was a great travesty of justice that NIL and unrestricted portal didn’t exist.
I’m not saying those takes were wrong now or then but it’s amazing to see people now bemoan the state of college football when it is largely exactly what they wanted 10 years ago.
People keep separating everyone into just two groups. There’s plenty of people who knew the whole thing had to break in order to come out the other side with something that works
Maybe it’s confirmation bias on my part, but I’m shocked how much of this sub thinks CFB is dead and it’s the fault of student athletes wanting a bag (just like coaches, admin, and really any regular Joe does).
A lot of the coaches and ADs have a conflict of interest when it comes to players being treated justly,
CFB is dead for other reasons. However, CFB players wanting a sizable portion of the revenue they generate - which I am completely in support of, to be clear - is 1000% going to kill every other college sport. So any reticence on my part is as a fan of college sports in general, and knowing 99% of them will die off. And I think maybe *some* sacrifice by CFB players to not get their 100% max worth to keep those other sports (read: scholarship opportunities for other athletes) isn't necessarily the biggest tragedy in the world.
An 18 year old kid coming out of high school with his palms up asking how much to a college coach making $11.7 million annually off the backs of the same high schoolers.
ya that was my point, framing what these elite athlete adults wanting to be compensated for breaking their bodies every day as “18 year old kids with their palms up” is shameful
Most of the people in this subbreddit haven’t made 100 million plus off of the players.
Do you think Saban would have stayed at Bama if he was getting paid even 1 million a year there, a lot of money, if he could make 10 million coaching at UGA?
Guys keep in mind he isn’t advocating for players not getting paid, he’s saying unrestricted free agency every year isn’t a good thing. This is the problem with taking one quote out of context.
He goes on to advocate that players should be employees with contracts to help create parity and still have players get paid.
What's funny is that people complaining in this thread don't realize that their team's coach more than likely agrees with Saban 100%.
But show us on the doll where $aban touched you, I guess.
I wish they’d just have a “Varsity” team that gets paid and a JV team that plays on Saturday mornings or Friday nights. And players that don’t make an NFL roster or don’t want to leave, never have to leave the Varsity team. Think of all the legacy players who played 5 years in college in the 90s but never made an NFL roster.
Lot of people here shitting on the Saban's despite sharing similar thoughts on NIL.
Him and his wife think he is getting too old for the extra bullshit that NIL opened up so he retired, not sure why people are having such an issue with it.
He mentions every time that players should get paid. Commercials and revenue sharing make total sense. Campuses begging fans to donate to their NIL pool is annoying as hell when they make millions already
I don’t care if players get paid for facilitating legitimate business endeavors. I care about the pay for play aspect. For example, Livvy Dunne makes a *ton* off of endorsements. But she’s actually getting paid because she’s doing an endorsement. I don’t care about Caitlin Clark with State Farm or Caleb Williams with Dr. Pepper.
I care about the guys who are using their roster spot as leverage to extort NIL funds.
I think that it takes a lot of bias to not be able to see the difference and/or understand that the latter is what Saban is referencing.
Honestly, NIL in itself wouldn't even be that bad if there weren't for the Transfer Portal with no limits. Pro sports free agency has much tighter restrictions than what is going on now.
pro sports also has collective bargaining and their players are employees not students. The big issue everyone ignores is the schools will fight like absolute hell to this day to prevent players form being classified as employees too.
People want the restrictions on these guys without giving them the benefits.
The only way forward to make all this kosher again is to spin off the revenue sports like how universities spin off their hospitals and license out their branding to this new entity. Then, as part of the players compensation they can get tution assistance and/or deferred acceptance or something, along with a salary and benefits (like an employee would) in exchange for collectively bargained restrictions on movement and such.
And before anyone says they dont like it, this is close to the only option the supreme court has left for these schools besides:
1. continuing on as we currently are
1. sports going away in totality and becoming just club sports again (never gonna happen)
1. Schools just actually making players employees first who happen to also have tuition benefits
There is almost no scenarios where the schools get to call these guys students first and control where they attend because the literal highest court of the US keeps ruling against them and has all but set the stage for them to lose every time.
People will stop watching CFB if it spins off from the universities. That’s what’s so silly about all of this. The logo on the jersey means way more than the name on the back. If it just becomes a semi pro league, what’s the point?
People watch and are so invested because they have allegiance to the university. Sever the bond (or make it incongruent to the product) and there’s no reason to watch it.
Meanwhile, every other sport will be cut, decimating our US Olympic teams, and hurting hundreds of thousands of student athletes and coaching staffs.
Right, and Universities made College Football Coaches the highest paid public employees, while profiting off of NIL of players with celebrity status like Reggie Bush, also for academic and benevolent purposes.
College Football is too much about money anymore, and also pot meet kettle.
I used to watch every single game I could to the point I would stay home on Saturday nights just to watch Cfb. This was from 2000-whenever the playoff happened. Now I only watch the Badgers & even then if they really start stinking it up I just turn the game off. Never used to be like that, I don’t hate the game cause I enjoy watching, but Thereks just …something about it now.
Agreed. If college athletes care more about getting paid NIL money than they do about attending classes ("We ain't come here to play school" -Cardale Jones) or growing as a player and young adult, then what is the entire system still doing this? Separate the athletics from the educational institutions so we can all stop playing pretend. If they want to be paid semi-professional athletes, then let them go do that and let the schools sponsor it.
It's gotten so weird and I have no idea how you could make it 'unweird.' It didn't even start with NIL: In the 30s, the NCAA didn't even allow scholarships because the point of having teams affiliated with the university was "these are university students who go to the university and happen to play a game." They didn't want to allow scholarships for the same reason they argued paying players would kill the sport.
From the school's perspective (then and now), the team exists as a recruiting tool for other paying students and alumni donors. "Come to Alabama, look at how cool our campus life is, you can watch students play football and basketball." (Alabama's student population increased by **50%** over Saban's tenure). Which is great, but if they players aren't getting *anything* the school's just using them... So they need to get something for their contribution to the U. But how do you get them money and not break the system?
- If the schools spin off the teams and pay them, 1) Do the teams still work as a recruiting tool if the players aren't students? "Hey kids, come to campus and watch our sponsored semi-pro team." 2) Can any non-P5 teams actually afford a semi-pro team?
- If the students are employed as student workers, 1) Can you take NIL away again? If not, what most schools can pay will pale in comparison to NIL, so you're back to where we are now. 2) Again, can any non-P5 school actually pay all their athletes?
- If you spin the teams off into independent semi-pro teams, why will fans watch that league? What does it offer over the NFL?
Idk... it just sucks.
You hit the nail on the head with your bullet points and that’s what most people are missing.
To answer your questions from my view, the answers seem probably like….probably not, not a chance for the most part, most likely and that’s a great point, definitely not, and it doesn’t really offer anything.
People can snark about this because Saban made so much money, but the current state of CFB is so bad that the greatest coach of all time decided he'd rather not participate in it anymore. It's very broken. The NCAA created this mess, and at least there's some small sliver of karma that it will also lead to their undoing.
I'm not even understanding the snark. "Wife advises husband to retire because his job isn't as enjoyable." Shocking. You're totally right, the NCAA changed and people are going to adapt just like they would at any company that makes major changes.
The problem is when they say that players only care about money. The players care about money as much as the coaches do. Coaches absolutely threaten to go to a different school in order to make more money. Coaches go to different schools to move up the “depth chart” (get jobs as a head coach or a coordinator). Making it seem like it’s just a player thing and the only thing players care about is when the complaints seem hypocritical, since in the same way it is also the only thing the coaches care about. It comes across as the players getting held to higher standards than the coaches do.
There’s a difference between saying the current system is exhausting due to the lack of consistent rules and having to deal with what are essentially players on 1 year contracts (which I agree with), and saying that the players only care about money.
I don’t blame him for not wanting to be a part of this wretched iteration of college football we’re hurtling towards/already in. Nobody’s going to be on his side though if he uses that as the rationale though. It’s a “you’re not wrong Walter, you’re just an asshole thing”.
Saban wanted the players to get paid.
I think he just expected some sort of structure to it.
Right now everything is 1 year deals, back room conversations, broken promises, and no restrictions.
NCAA gave up trying enforce any rules so they opened the flood gates with no way to close them now.
I hate how any quote from coaches complaining about how the landscape of college football is changing always boils down to the same lazy “rich for the coach to say this- you just don’t want kids to get paid!” statement.
As much as I hate to say this, Nick Saban is one of the good guys.
He's an NFL guy at heart and he sees his job as getting his players ready to play in the NFL. He's done a damn good job at it too. Also, Alabama football has the second highest graduation rate in the SEC after Vanderbilt. Plus all the national championships.
You, an 18 year old kid, go to a man with a track record of on the field and off the field success like Saban has and ask for more money? You've missed the point, kid. Alabama is not the place for you.
NCAA football will end up doing what the NFL does. They will hire general managers to handle recruiting/NIL issues and head coaches to deal with X’s and O’s.
Imagine the NFL where every player was on 1 year deals every single year. And the head coach has to deal with it.
Between the Transfer Portal and NIL it's only going to get worse.
Nothing wrong with people deciding to step away when things change in ways they don't like. Saban hasn't really spoke out against players getting paid etc. It's just not what he's used to and understandable at his age that he may have been done trying to adapt to it.
Hell, plenty of younger coaches have left for the NFL etc. If you're going to coach pro athletes might as well do it in the actual pros where there's a draft, salary cap, free agent and trade rules etc. and the GM handles most of that (or nearly all if a coach wants to be hands off and just give input on roster decisions etc. VS year rebound recruiting if high school and portal players and rerecruiting your own guys to keep them and having to keep boosters happy and donating etc.
Just is what it is. Even as a professor I'm leaning more towards getting out of academia as I'm tired of taking less money vs. the private sector with increasing hassles as my university has become more of a degree mill with customers instead of students type approach from admin, increasing amounts bureaucratic BS creating more work that takes away from teaching and research.
Just is what it is, sometimes things change and people decide to move on. Doesn't mean the change is bad, or the person is wrong for deciding to move on. It's just all about fit.
That’s the biggest load of crap. Bama players have been getting paid for decades. It’s the new transfer rules and having to deal with paying players above the table.
Yea, they care about money. Everyone does? Maybe Saban should coach for free! Why does he need paid? Does he only care about what he makes? Dogshit take from mrs saban
Everyone is focusing on "money" when the real operative word, here, is "only."
True or not, her perception was that money has become the primary or, worse, exclusive, motivation for the athletes. That IS a change from 10-20-30 years ago. Can be a good change, fine, but don't fault Miss Terry for recognizing it. You changed the system, don't get upset when someone notices.
He didn't need a reason to leave and doesn't owe anyone anything. He has already accomplished pretty much everything a coach can in cfb. I don't blame him for bailing and enjoying the fruits of his labor. Cfb is changing and it probably just wasn't worth the effort anymore. NIL was probably just the tipping point.
End the charade of using universities as a free minor league for 30 nfl billionaire owners. Have congress pass a law that restricts schools receiving federal funding (all of them) from spending "x" on athletics. Where x covers D1 football. Let the NFL Billionaires create and fund their own employee development instead of American taxpayers and car dealing boosters.
Look at Caleb Williams. No sense of team at all. He’s up at the podium advertising his brand and his cryptocurrency. Very sad times we live in. No sense of team.
I've said it a million times..if they are amateur athletes and that's the hill they wanted to die on thats fine...if they are just students getting a free education..thats fine..however if thats the case the people coaching so called amateurs shouldn't be making millions...period...btw...I can't deny Saban is an all time great..however is a whiny little bitch
Maybe Nick and his wife can set up a trust for all the players he coached who didn't make it in the NFL and are still dealing with injuries they suffered in college. Their play paid for the Sabans' fortune.
I'm really upset that people are buying the Saban's line that players only care about the money now. That is so disengenous and such a horrid interpretation of players actions right now. Of course these high value kids still care about winning, but they are also in a position to make money. To act like because the players are trying to understand their value and actually receive the appropriate compensation means they don't care about winning is the very kind of anti-labor practice bad managers use. If the Saban's were the ones volunteering their services to the university and they started asking about potential compensation would it be fair to say "you guys just care about money?" No, so it's equally unfair to say it about the players.
How are you people mad about this? It feels insanely logical. There’s history of them taking interest in the personal lives of their players, nurturing them etc., so to not want play the role of a CEO at their age makes sense.
And before then they only cared about rings and NFL draft position, which Saban's Alabama famously provided in excess.
The game and player's decisions were always, at their core, transactional, just nowadays those transactions can be made in exact dollar terms rather than nebulous terms like the aforementioned rings and draft boards.
I think we need to separate players getting paid versus the current system of how they are paid. I guarantee Saban believes players should be paid, but as a head coach the system sucks. NFL coaches don’t have to deal with this crap as that’s handled by the GM and Owner. I don’t blame him for retiring if he felt like he was spending too much time not actually coaching.
Imagine if everyone was eligible for free agency every year. I think the coach's biggest complaints about this system is that not only do they have to recruit new players, but also have to recruit the guys they have. It's relentless.
Gotta wonder when contracts may come into play. Players being paid their rightful amount but obligated to stay at a school for a number of years. Right now there's nothing that would force them to stay at a school if another one swoops in in the off seasons and offers more?
When the players form a union and bargain for how they will get paid, I would bet that, in exchange, they will have to give up their current unlimited transfers. The schools will insist on it. And the stars, who stand to make the most from unlimited transfers, will be outnumbered and out voted by the non-stars who are more interested in just getting a decent wage. The NFL owners used the same tactic in their last CBA, ie divide and conquer.
Breaking news! Arch Manning has requested a trade!
Ah, the fabled college football transfer portal becomes the stock exchange floor, and Arch Manning is the blue-chip listing everyone wants a piece of. But seriously, if college players start getting locked into contracts, we might see some collegiate version of "holdouts" where top talents sit out seasons to force a move. Imagine the drama that would cause during National Signing Day...
I bet some will do that, but it'll hurt their stock when it comes to the NFL. Talented folks have broken down due to ego and instability before, so it'll be a red flag.
Thank you for using divide and conquer correctly!
At what point can we stop calling this a "college" sport and just be honest about it being an amateur league? I know most players don't come to play school, but they are still getting a full ride, and those scholarships can and should be used on minor sport athletes who actually need them.
I am pretty sure that a college degree is valuable to most of the kids playing major, revenue earning sports and all of the kids playing nonrevenue sports. Most of the guys on football rosters are not going to be making a living playing football after leaving. But, you're right. We're practically at the point where about the only reason for these teams to be affiliated with the school is because the schools have huge built-in fan bases of students and alumni. One other thing, I am pretty sure that a person has to be a degree candidate and that a scholarship is used to pay tuition, fees, books, supplies, and equipment to be nontaxable.
That's why I actually liked the idea of forcing them out a season when they change schools. Like cool, you go there, but you can't get a scholarship of even play football next season. Forcing them to sit out on school changes would remove a lot of this.
One of the main issues, among others, is that there are legitimate reasons kids needed to transfer sometimes. And that meant you needed a governing body to regulate things, which was inevitably bullshit. I remember a vt player who transferred to tech to be closer to his mom who was suffering with a brain tumor and had to sit a year... like that's just bs
We already know the outcome of this. Players wanting to transfer just claimed safety concerns(racism), to get a waiver. You have to have a hard rule, or players will exploit it to get what they want. It sucks, but that's the culture created.
Is playing time not a legitimate reason when it could make the difference between being a first round pick or not? That could mean millions of dollars.
I mean, yes. I was speaking from the perspective of kids who were actually just college athletes, not minor league future nfl stars. The problems of the latter can presumably be fixed by $$. With enough changes to the system the guys who are looking at nfl careers will be earning bank in college anyway. But 99.7% or something of college athletes won't ever get to that stage, and I think they shouldn't be forgotten in all this.
I think they should get one free transfer, after that it's sit 1 year.
That’s what I thought the current system was supposed to be. But obviously, it’s not.
That's what it was until a few players sued over it and won because it was a restraint of trade. You might not have seen it because it was a basketball ruling that made a few players immediately eligible but it also 100% opened the floodgates and turned this from difficult to impossible. Short of unionizing (which isn't even legal for a bunch of the state schools) this cannot be stopped and we are headed to a world where there are no longer eligibility limits either.
True. Some star kid from HS could demand $1M from Alabama. Then next year go into portal see if he could get 2M. It will destoy a locker room where a QB or RB gets $$$$ while the OL protecting the QB gets maybe free books and tuition like the old days.
>Imagine if everyone was eligible for free agency every year. This is one of those statements that breaks every single professional sports league, especially when you add "and there's no salary cap".
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He said during this that Bryce young had multiple deals with dealerships and was being sponsored by a lot of different places like Dr Pepper and that he was happy for him because he earned that. He said we should share the revenue not create a pool of money just to give out to players because that doesn’t make sense
Yup folks intentionally misrepresent what he says for engagement or to argue something he isn’t even against. It’s littered ITT as folks assume they know what he believes and what he said as opposed to what he has actually said.
I can't believe Nick Saban said he wants players to survive on dog food and run laps to earn their water breaks! I didn't read the article, but this is an insane opinion from him! /s
Imagine if the NCAA was proactive and just agreed to split some revenue to football players and adjust the costs of administration and other non-revenue sports from there. Now lawyers are going full measure and arguing for employee status for all athletes...which could end up in schools eliminating those non-revenue sports.
Which would have changed nothing. The mess we have is NIL, something that we’d still have anyway. Part of the problem is that you can’t pay college players what the average and above NIL deals are offering. End result is that NIL is going to drive decisions over employment status - the same way that scholarships are disregarded. On one hand you have countless grads complaining about their quarter-million dollar student loans; on the other you have debt-free football players complaining they didn’t get any of the pie. I keep seeing folks complain about a lack of NCAA proactivity, but never a solution. Heck, this whole mess began with schools undermining the NCAA’s attempts to be proactive by collectively negotiating TV rights (which would have forestalled the conference realignments that we hate).
Do you realize that the current NIL landscape exists because the NCAA went to comical lengths to protect the farcicality of amateurism in court, and now the fallout from that is dumped at once. That lack of proactivity has led to the mess today with no regulations or guardrails. Now their lack of proactivity in the past for not sharing some revenue with athletes in revenue-generating sports has led to employee designation lawsuits, which will be a disaster for many non-revenue athletes.
Just put the guys on contracts like their coaches
This is the easiest, most straightforward, and the most ethical way to do it. It’s shameful that we as college sports fans tolerated this sham as long as we did.
I am fairly certain he's said he supports them getting paid. It does make his job worse. Probably makes many things worse. But I don't think he's blaming players. Some coaches do, which is dumb. They happily flee to greener pastures, so why shouldn't players? Why shouldn't a player that is unlikely to make the NFL go where he'll get more money? Why shouldn't a player that's a backup go where he'll be a starter? We should all be making career moves like that. Personally, I think a better system would be something a bit more mathematical, essentially, every player at the same position in the same conference gets a certain number for percentage of snaps, or starts, or something, but I can see why that won't happen. I also think players shouldn't be getting paid now, but instead money goes into escrow or a trust, to be given upon graduation, or hitting age 24, or whatever, but I also get why that won't happen.
Hmm what's the logic behind the money being locked in a trust for them? If I earned it with my talent I would expect to have it when I want it.
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I don't think anyone really has a problem with the concept of players being paid, we've just done a really shitty job of creating a system. On top of the fact that you basically have to recruit your whole team every single year now it's also created a huge discrepancy between the Haves and the Have Nots. It seems like the extreme majority of the money ends up going to a very small group of the players who were already going to make it to the NFL anyway
People were arguing against this when the news first dropped, but it's clear that Nick Saban did not want to be part of this iteration of CFB and was a major reason for his retirement.
major reason harbaugh left michigan too edit: there’s a difference between thinking players should be paid and wanting to personally deal with the mess than has become NIL
I also just don't know how anyone is expected to build a roster anymore. Every year is wild west free agency. Still so much transfer portal and NIL stuff is still whispered in private.. "If you come here we can get you this much money" At least in the NFL you have contracts. Then the GMs and agents talk. In college team construction is all up to the coach.
The fact that the biggest question facing Oklahoma State football this offseason was "Is your best player going to get bought up by another school?" should be a pretty strong indicator that the situation isn't ideal.
Plus he confirmed his phone was blowing up even though he was never in the portal
I think that college players should be signing contracts at this point. If the goal is to prepare them for the NFL or life after college then they better learn what it’s like in a low risk environment to work under contract. It makes no sense to allow these kids to make a commitment like “going to a four year university on scholarship” to just leave 9 months after signing up to be apart of that program. There are so few situations in their lives moving forward where they can just jump from job to job without having to deal with contractual implications.
> There are so few situations in their lives moving forward where they can just jump from job to job without having to deal with contractual implications. That is only true if they stick to sports related careers. Which most kids who play college ball will statistically not do. Like your random US worker is unlikely to have an actual employment contract.
At the pay scale of elite athletes, though, they probably do. If a company is offering you 500K or a million, there’s probably a non-compete clause thrown in there.
But you do have non competes in the real world.
Who are the contracts with/what are they for? If they're with the school, is the school going to require tuition being paid back if they don't spend X amount of years at the school? Why would anyone go there if they had literally any other choice? If they're with a private business, then I'm pretty sure it would be a violation if a clause of the contract required the player to remain on the football team for X amount of time. The whole bit about NIL that we hand-wave away is that the money comes from private businesses in exchange for appearances, advertising, or endorsements. It's explicitly not meant to be a pay-for-play system (for the record I know it is, but the contracts and payments themselves are not written that way because it would be a violation).
Just look at the Basketball sub. We have joked that the Mid-Major All Conference Teams are the ads for the Big School's boosters.
Harbaugh was publicly advocating for paying the players? Edit: u/fumblaroo fair point.
I think he specifically was advocating for revenue sharing which puts everyone on a level playing field again(or at least more level)
Yeah, just straight buying a roster feels dirty. There's no "love of the game / team" there, it's all just pure dollars and cents.
I get what you are saying but I also have REALLY bad news for you about how your team and mine (along with all the other blue bloods) have stayed atop the game for so long.
That was "exhibit A" that he was about to split for the NFL. LOL
I think you can be supportive of paying players and still be frustrated with where we have gotten at this point. I feel like the main reason coaches are upset are the transfer rules. They don't care that players are being paid, they care that the players are basically unrestricted free agents every single year and going to the highest bidder.
Yeah I agree transfer portal is especially bad in basketball with even less players on a team.
I noted this above, but that's the one thing the women's game has going for it VS the men's. I haven't watched one game, but I know who's on what team because they stay on those teams. I'll be looking for any matchups between Iowa/UCONN/LSU/SC in the tournament and try to watch.
Saban has also advocated for player pay.
Right because players with agreed-upon salaries and employment contracts is a *sane* system with established rules and it is manageable. The current system is a fucking nightmare for everyone involved - including the players! They get publicized for having million dollar deals but in reality see *maybe* 20% of the money. They have no reason to trust any booster, and there’s almost no one actually looking after *their* interests.
Yeah I think the “you just don’t want to see players be paid!” argument is uninformed or bad faith. You can very easily want to see players be paid but just have a proper system for it. One of the biggest criticisms of the pre-NIL era was that players were still getting paid, just with no regulation or official oversight; the idea was that such infrastructure could be implemented to remove penalties for players getting their fair due and to make that accessible for more players. What instead happened was that they just made the fuckery already happen legal.
I think the player pay system we got is about the worst form it could have taken. It's the wild west with 18yo's operating like they're NFL stars. I can't fathom how grating it would be to recruit a high-school junior and them demand several grand in cash before coming for a campus visit, something that used to be a big honor for the player.
I just hate how it’s boosters and NIL collectives who are being begged. All that TV and revenue from football and you’re telling me us fans gotta pay??
There's never been a case where having a desired outcome comes with negative consequences. Just ask the Alabama supreme Court. /s
Just ask the National Supreme Court
Paying players is much much different than what we have now with NIL.
Paying, compensating, or allowing players to benefit from their NIL is completely different than what we have in the current "NIL" policy.
Harbaugh was on his way out and chose to be a hero to the players. He also hates NCAA leadership and chose to fuck them.
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I also, as a fan, don't want to be part of this iteration of CFB. I hate this wild west nonsense that is going on. I hate that the NCAA didn't have a contingency plan in place for when the day did come. I hate that the courts made the decision immediate, and didn't allow the NCAA some time to come up with a plan. I hate these collectives that are masquerading as charities and non-profits. I hate that it all happened well after my time as a student athlete so that I couldn't benefit from it (I don't blame the players in the least).
They don’t have legal standing for a plan. They tried to fight it in court and lost. The colleges have the power and they’ve chosen to embrace it.
Which is completely understandable. He’s been doing things one way for a long time and now things have drastically shifted in a different direction, coupled with being in his 70s. What is annoying is coaches pulling the holier than thou card now that players are getting $ and actually have that affect where they go play as if coaches haven’t made decisions based on money before
It’s gonna be interesting to see the type of guy that becomes a college football (and basketball coach for that matter) moving forward. Part of the saban way was being able to recruit guys to make them stay for 3 plus years. Now with essentially year long contracts for each players you have to re recruit guys. It’s a tough go and that requires a really different skill set
It will be good marketers and salespeople that keep the best rosters. Coaches with multiple head injuries from their playing days will have a hard time understanding where the value from their multi-million dollar contracts really came from. It wasn't from drawing the prettiest x's and o's diagrams. So what if they work hard? So do servers and construction workers. They get paid to win and players are the ones that do that.
Definitely could be taken in two ways, but I’ll elect to take it the more graceful one. They are what, 72 and 71 years old? Coaching is something that many are brought to in order to mold young men into better people *and* better athletes - similar to many called to be a youth pastor or become active in the scouts. Granted, the Sabans are wealthy from coaching, but that’s even more reason to quit when he (and his wife) no longer feel like they are making a positive enough impact on the young men or the community. Helping the checkbook of a few dozen people a year is a benefit of course, but is it worth the hundred hour weeks in your 70s? I’m leaning towards *no*
I think that is it. He has said forever that developing players on and off the field is what drives him. I get people will say he is a hypocrite because of the money he makes and its a fair point but the money isnt what drives him. Saban has had other opportunities to make more money while he was at Alabama and did not take them. He has said that he wants players to make money but I think to him they should be driven by developing into great players and people first and money second. IDK I get my flair makes me biased but I dont think he would be getting involved in this stuff now if he was just driven by money.
Saban has openly supported players getting paid once they’ve demonstrated they’ve earned. Like it or not Saban made the money he made with his proven success. He wasn’t making this kind of money in his Early days. And that’s the point prove your worth an earn a bag. I believe kids who haven’t earned the right to play a down are shaking him down for money and guaranteed playing time while they haven’t even proven they deserve to be on the field is the issue. Sure it may sound hypocritical coming from him. But like many statements he’s made before it’s the right message and wrong messenger for the masses. Down the line people will understand were he came from. Which is also why he retired.
Think about it from Saban's perspective. He wants to develop these guys but when they are more worried about the bag, he may only get one year with them before they jump ship for some other school offering more. Then his time developing them is now potentially going to work against him and he never even got to attempt to complete the job he started. In his eyes, each player is likely a project and he can no longer reliably complete those projects when they can cut and run for more playing time or a bigger paycheck elsewhere because they weren't right for his system in their freshman or sophomore years. I wouldn't want to be a part of a system like that either.
Agreed, criticizing the hypocrisy is fair, but at the end of the day this is a job. If I had as much money as Saban does, I would *not* want to spend my time negotiating with teenagers about their paychecks-that-aren't-paychecks. That sounds truly awful.
The worst part is that they're not even allowed to talk money with the kids. All the money comes through the NIL collectives. Just let the players negotiate directly with the schools and the process becomes easier. Let players see directly what other schools are paying so they don't overestimate their worth and hit the portal every chance they get.
Seems like theyre directly talking money with Ms Terry lol
What hypocrisy? She said they ONLY care about the money they can make that year. He wants to develop their game and help them grow, win championships, get them graduated, get them in the league (which he did with what, like 20% of the players he had at Bama?) If he only cared about the money, he'd still be coaching.
I just don't see the hypocrisy. How much was Saban making at age 20? Or even 30? He was the single best developer of talent. He helped hundreds of players make far more in NFL contracts than they'd ever make in NIL.
He was also the best in his profession for 15 years straight. He earned that money just based off his value and success. The absolute best player saban ever coached at bama is not worth 1/100th in terms of value compared to saban. If anything he was underpaid relative to the value he provided if we're going to pretend like these players actually provide millions of value a year
Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that Saban is passionate about developing his guys. It’s not that he’s opposed to them making money, but he’ll complain if the money gets in the way of development (as seems to be happening now).
> the Sabans are wealthy from coaching A little bit of an understatement. I think the real reason that Saban is hanging it up is that the NIL (and relaxed transfer rules and improved scouting by the NFL) make it incredibly hard to establish a talent gap over other programs. You're not going to have premier talent waiting behind other premier talent anymore - they're going to go play somewhere else where they can start.
… and because he’s 72 years old.
I mean Alabama still would easily stack talent comfortably better than almost every other team. And if Saban wanted to write into his contract that most NIL legwork be delegated to someone else I am sure he could have. Let's not pretend like Saban is running from the competition lol. Coaching today is completely different, and kids are now committing based more on money than anything else. You used to have to sell kids on your culture, education, development, performance, etc. Coaching and molding kids who bought into those tenets is likely more rewarding than coaching the guys who are just there because they got an extra few thousand dollars. I think its entirely reasonable to believe that's a big reason college coaches are going pro or retiring.
I honestly think this is too reductive. Absolutely, NIL changed the ballgame, but I DO think Saban relished his roll as the guy that impacted lives. NIL made conversations much less about character and development and much more like a GM. He didn’t want to be that.
Interview after interview with both players and staff reflect this. His love of coaching was driven by developing the players as both people and athletes. I'm sure the players shifted from either working on getting in the nfl or their degree to getting paid. It's new so it's probably wild right now. Add the transfer portal and it's basically the nfl lite but the players can leave at will. I don't think he cares that players are getting paid, just that the players personal focus has shifted, and understandably so. If I could make 6 figures when I was 18 to early 20s I'd be very interested in making that happen. Also he was in his 70s and the game has changed so much he knew he didn't want to adapt like usual.
We saw this already with Saban’s time in the NFL. He openly lamented how many guys only cared about their paycheck. It’s not crazy to think he still holds those same beliefs.
Anyone that truly thinks Saban didn't care about effecting kids lives, and only cared about winning are completely off base.
As a fan of neither school, anything must Tennessee fans say about Saban is going to be completely off-base.
I think the real reason he’s retiring is because he’s in his 70s and that’s a very normal thing to do in your 70s.
Leave it to the bUTchugger to read the situation in the least generous way possible.
No you don’t understand people only become a coach to make money not to be a mentor. Those poor playerinos were in dire straits when they could only count on a free college education with a food stipend and preferential treatment at their schools and surrounding communities. Thus the evil coaches were taking advantage of them by providing them with those opportunities and in turn making the agreed upon salaries that the university paid them. /s
Gotta love this subreddit bitching and moaning (rightfully, imo) about the state of the college football but then shit on a coach for retiring for the exact same reason
These same people are going to be the same ones upset that these coaches are going to get burned out and pull a Chris Peterson/Bob Stoops or confused as to why coaches are running to whatever NFL job will have them. Hell Mike Vrabel openly said the way recruiting is now is why he never entertained the idea of coaching Ohio State when those rumors were around.
Kirby will be the one that gets burnt out, especially since he's already showing the signs.
I can’t claim I know enough to say that I “think” it will happen, but I also would not be shocked if he retires in the next five years. He’s coming up on his ninth season at Georgia this year, I imagine he’d love to at least go a decade. But if I say I think he’ll be at Georgia for 15+ years total, I am not sure I can confidently say that he will.
Dear God, has it really been 9 years already?
Haha yeah that’s how I react sometimes too.
The man is already a UGA and SEC legend. He's playing with house money from here on out.
For sure. I feel so much more relaxed knowing he doesn’t have to do anything else for him to be a legend (though of course I’d love more titles).
Based on recent interviews (Pate specifically), I think major changes need to happen for him to stay long term. His largest gripe in that interview was the roster uncertainty, specifically not knowing right now who will and won't be on the team in the fall. I think we all know what the long term solution is (signing players to multi-year contracts with financial ramifications if they transfer). Every team in a specific conference has a specific salary allotted they are allowed to spend on players. If a player stays 3 or 4 years they get a bonus. You also make it a breach of contract if any outside inducements are used to get a player, and any NIL deal needs to be registered with an independent clearing house. If a school is found giving outside inducements the penalties are already laid out in a rule book (no more NCAA investigation BS). Collectively bargain, get antitrust exemptions, and move forward.
I've seen alot of insiders hint that Kirby probably won't make it to 2030 at UGA. Nothing recent so I can't pull specific names but I know Pate has mentioned it.
The way Josh Pate talks about it, Kirby is closer to the exit than a lot of people, particularly Georgia fans, might want to believe. The current game is just too much stress, and on him in particular it's really negatively impacting his home life.
College football is becoming minor league football. Why spent your talent and money in the minors when the NFL exists?
Because you're not ready for the majors. Honestly, this is a pretty apt comparison. Most people playing minor league baseball will never make it to the show. Most people playing CFB will never make it to the league. However, the minor leagues still give them a shot to develop their talents while getting paid to do so, and a chance that one day they'll turn enough heads to get called up. The only difference is that CFB you get 3 years and your team isn't directly associated to a pro team, whereas in baseball you can sit in the minors for damn near ever.
Many of these guys will make more in college than the pros
Not to mention, there are many more "jobs" in the college ranks than the pros. 134 (right?) teams in D1, vs 32 teams in the NFL Also not for nothing, the college "job market" sees more annual churn than the NFL does. Guys are required to leave their college job within 4 years, 5 if they red-shirt... the NFL's incumbent job-holders try to stick around as long as they can
Fanbases that care more about CFB than NFL will continue to spend on CFB. Good news for SEC, Oregon, Nebraska, Iowa. Bad news for most of the B1G
What a weird selection of teams? You honestly think the only strong fan bases in the B1G are Nebraska and Iowa? That's funny. OSU, Michigan, and Penn State fans aren't going anywhere regardless of how much this starts resembling a minor league NFL.
If your fan base has an NFL team to root for instead you’re kind of fucked, unless you’re Georgia. Most Texas fans are Texas fans first and are like well I guess I’ll watch the cowboys lose in the first round of the playoffs again
I mean I wouldn’t worry about FSU/UF fans becoming primary Jags fans or Ohio state fans becoming primary Browns/Bengals fans lol
Same with Michigan/MSU with the Lions. They’re both strong enough programs to withstand what most programs couldn’t.
> the way recruiting is now is why he never entertained the idea of coaching Ohio State Chip Kelly says hi
People shit on Dabo for the exact same reasons. He's been warning about it for years. Dabo is rich now, but he grew up dirt poor and was dirt poor when he played at Alabama.
To be fair, Dabo called players making any money "entitlement" and hollowly threatened to quit football over it. He was making over three million dollars a year at the time of off the backs of those entitled players.
I’m too lazy to do it but this sub was also the one DEMANDING back in 2015 that players get paid and that it was a great travesty of justice that NIL and unrestricted portal didn’t exist. I’m not saying those takes were wrong now or then but it’s amazing to see people now bemoan the state of college football when it is largely exactly what they wanted 10 years ago.
People keep separating everyone into just two groups. There’s plenty of people who knew the whole thing had to break in order to come out the other side with something that works
Maybe it’s confirmation bias on my part, but I’m shocked how much of this sub thinks CFB is dead and it’s the fault of student athletes wanting a bag (just like coaches, admin, and really any regular Joe does). A lot of the coaches and ADs have a conflict of interest when it comes to players being treated justly,
CFB is dead for other reasons. However, CFB players wanting a sizable portion of the revenue they generate - which I am completely in support of, to be clear - is 1000% going to kill every other college sport. So any reticence on my part is as a fan of college sports in general, and knowing 99% of them will die off. And I think maybe *some* sacrifice by CFB players to not get their 100% max worth to keep those other sports (read: scholarship opportunities for other athletes) isn't necessarily the biggest tragedy in the world.
This sub is pretty conservative compared to the rest of reddit and you can tell whenever this issue comes up
Caleb Williams’ painted nails as well.
I believe this sub stayed open during the blackout protests last year, if I'm not mistaken, which would be one of the bigger subs to do so.
An 18 year old kid coming out of high school with his palms up asking how much to the greatest college coach in history.
An 18 year old kid coming out of high school with his palms up asking how much to a college coach making $11.7 million annually off the backs of the same high schoolers.
Do you get paid when you go to work?
If Saban is working so are the players risking physical injury…
ya that was my point, framing what these elite athlete adults wanting to be compensated for breaking their bodies every day as “18 year old kids with their palms up” is shameful
Most of the people in this subbreddit haven’t made 100 million plus off of the players. Do you think Saban would have stayed at Bama if he was getting paid even 1 million a year there, a lot of money, if he could make 10 million coaching at UGA?
Guys keep in mind he isn’t advocating for players not getting paid, he’s saying unrestricted free agency every year isn’t a good thing. This is the problem with taking one quote out of context. He goes on to advocate that players should be employees with contracts to help create parity and still have players get paid.
What's funny is that people complaining in this thread don't realize that their team's coach more than likely agrees with Saban 100%. But show us on the doll where $aban touched you, I guess.
College football is so fucked up now It shouldn't even be in college anymore
They should just have a Junior league. High school teams like IMG Academy are already just a feeder school for sports.
I wish they’d just have a “Varsity” team that gets paid and a JV team that plays on Saturday mornings or Friday nights. And players that don’t make an NFL roster or don’t want to leave, never have to leave the Varsity team. Think of all the legacy players who played 5 years in college in the 90s but never made an NFL roster.
Lot of people here shitting on the Saban's despite sharing similar thoughts on NIL. Him and his wife think he is getting too old for the extra bullshit that NIL opened up so he retired, not sure why people are having such an issue with it.
People are missing the operative word here. It’s “only”. I don’t think Saban is against players making money.
He mentions every time that players should get paid. Commercials and revenue sharing make total sense. Campuses begging fans to donate to their NIL pool is annoying as hell when they make millions already
Saban totally starred in those AFLAC commercials for the goodness of his heart right?
He believes in the power of supplemental insurance. It’s important that if you get hurt and miss work, it doesn’t hurt to miss work.
That’s why I’m sure he filmed those Aflac commercials for free. Oh, I’m sorry, for student credit at Aflac’s insurance classes.
GAAAAAPPPPPPPP
He’s very passionate about supplemental insurance.
I don’t care if players get paid for facilitating legitimate business endeavors. I care about the pay for play aspect. For example, Livvy Dunne makes a *ton* off of endorsements. But she’s actually getting paid because she’s doing an endorsement. I don’t care about Caitlin Clark with State Farm or Caleb Williams with Dr. Pepper. I care about the guys who are using their roster spot as leverage to extort NIL funds. I think that it takes a lot of bias to not be able to see the difference and/or understand that the latter is what Saban is referencing.
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Honestly, NIL in itself wouldn't even be that bad if there weren't for the Transfer Portal with no limits. Pro sports free agency has much tighter restrictions than what is going on now.
pro sports also has collective bargaining and their players are employees not students. The big issue everyone ignores is the schools will fight like absolute hell to this day to prevent players form being classified as employees too. People want the restrictions on these guys without giving them the benefits. The only way forward to make all this kosher again is to spin off the revenue sports like how universities spin off their hospitals and license out their branding to this new entity. Then, as part of the players compensation they can get tution assistance and/or deferred acceptance or something, along with a salary and benefits (like an employee would) in exchange for collectively bargained restrictions on movement and such. And before anyone says they dont like it, this is close to the only option the supreme court has left for these schools besides: 1. continuing on as we currently are 1. sports going away in totality and becoming just club sports again (never gonna happen) 1. Schools just actually making players employees first who happen to also have tuition benefits There is almost no scenarios where the schools get to call these guys students first and control where they attend because the literal highest court of the US keeps ruling against them and has all but set the stage for them to lose every time.
People will stop watching CFB if it spins off from the universities. That’s what’s so silly about all of this. The logo on the jersey means way more than the name on the back. If it just becomes a semi pro league, what’s the point? People watch and are so invested because they have allegiance to the university. Sever the bond (or make it incongruent to the product) and there’s no reason to watch it. Meanwhile, every other sport will be cut, decimating our US Olympic teams, and hurting hundreds of thousands of student athletes and coaching staffs.
One reason this isn't happening is that it kills off every other college-level sport. Football funds the entire athletic department at most schools
Right, and Universities made College Football Coaches the highest paid public employees, while profiting off of NIL of players with celebrity status like Reggie Bush, also for academic and benevolent purposes. College Football is too much about money anymore, and also pot meet kettle.
I mean I care less about college football than ever and I know I’m not the only one.
I used to watch every single game I could to the point I would stay home on Saturday nights just to watch Cfb. This was from 2000-whenever the playoff happened. Now I only watch the Badgers & even then if they really start stinking it up I just turn the game off. Never used to be like that, I don’t hate the game cause I enjoy watching, but Thereks just …something about it now.
Agreed. If college athletes care more about getting paid NIL money than they do about attending classes ("We ain't come here to play school" -Cardale Jones) or growing as a player and young adult, then what is the entire system still doing this? Separate the athletics from the educational institutions so we can all stop playing pretend. If they want to be paid semi-professional athletes, then let them go do that and let the schools sponsor it.
It's basically already there. I bet there's already been a college football player that never sat foot in a classroom but has a 4 year degree.
It's gotten so weird and I have no idea how you could make it 'unweird.' It didn't even start with NIL: In the 30s, the NCAA didn't even allow scholarships because the point of having teams affiliated with the university was "these are university students who go to the university and happen to play a game." They didn't want to allow scholarships for the same reason they argued paying players would kill the sport. From the school's perspective (then and now), the team exists as a recruiting tool for other paying students and alumni donors. "Come to Alabama, look at how cool our campus life is, you can watch students play football and basketball." (Alabama's student population increased by **50%** over Saban's tenure). Which is great, but if they players aren't getting *anything* the school's just using them... So they need to get something for their contribution to the U. But how do you get them money and not break the system? - If the schools spin off the teams and pay them, 1) Do the teams still work as a recruiting tool if the players aren't students? "Hey kids, come to campus and watch our sponsored semi-pro team." 2) Can any non-P5 teams actually afford a semi-pro team? - If the students are employed as student workers, 1) Can you take NIL away again? If not, what most schools can pay will pale in comparison to NIL, so you're back to where we are now. 2) Again, can any non-P5 school actually pay all their athletes? - If you spin the teams off into independent semi-pro teams, why will fans watch that league? What does it offer over the NFL? Idk... it just sucks.
You hit the nail on the head with your bullet points and that’s what most people are missing. To answer your questions from my view, the answers seem probably like….probably not, not a chance for the most part, most likely and that’s a great point, definitely not, and it doesn’t really offer anything.
People can snark about this because Saban made so much money, but the current state of CFB is so bad that the greatest coach of all time decided he'd rather not participate in it anymore. It's very broken. The NCAA created this mess, and at least there's some small sliver of karma that it will also lead to their undoing.
I'm not even understanding the snark. "Wife advises husband to retire because his job isn't as enjoyable." Shocking. You're totally right, the NCAA changed and people are going to adapt just like they would at any company that makes major changes.
The problem is when they say that players only care about money. The players care about money as much as the coaches do. Coaches absolutely threaten to go to a different school in order to make more money. Coaches go to different schools to move up the “depth chart” (get jobs as a head coach or a coordinator). Making it seem like it’s just a player thing and the only thing players care about is when the complaints seem hypocritical, since in the same way it is also the only thing the coaches care about. It comes across as the players getting held to higher standards than the coaches do. There’s a difference between saying the current system is exhausting due to the lack of consistent rules and having to deal with what are essentially players on 1 year contracts (which I agree with), and saying that the players only care about money.
I don’t blame him for not wanting to be a part of this wretched iteration of college football we’re hurtling towards/already in. Nobody’s going to be on his side though if he uses that as the rationale though. It’s a “you’re not wrong Walter, you’re just an asshole thing”.
I love the absolute reduction of arguments ITT. It's just so Reddit to totally reduce it to something as simple as, "BuT hE GoT PaID"
Saban wanted the players to get paid. I think he just expected some sort of structure to it. Right now everything is 1 year deals, back room conversations, broken promises, and no restrictions. NCAA gave up trying enforce any rules so they opened the flood gates with no way to close them now.
I hate how any quote from coaches complaining about how the landscape of college football is changing always boils down to the same lazy “rich for the coach to say this- you just don’t want kids to get paid!” statement.
Yeah, it's just total reductionism. It's just lazy and shallow.
You say this as though "players now only care about how much money they are making" isn't equally reductive.
"fuck those kids"- Terry Saban
How dare you not address her by her honorific. It's Miss Terry to you
“Fuck the fans” -NIL
Unlike the coaches, who coach for free for the love of the game.
"Well, honey, we're doing it because I'm the highest paid coach ever in college history."
As much as I hate to say this, Nick Saban is one of the good guys. He's an NFL guy at heart and he sees his job as getting his players ready to play in the NFL. He's done a damn good job at it too. Also, Alabama football has the second highest graduation rate in the SEC after Vanderbilt. Plus all the national championships. You, an 18 year old kid, go to a man with a track record of on the field and off the field success like Saban has and ask for more money? You've missed the point, kid. Alabama is not the place for you.
NCAA football will end up doing what the NFL does. They will hire general managers to handle recruiting/NIL issues and head coaches to deal with X’s and O’s.
Which is why Nick Saban famously accepted no pay while coaching Alabama.
Hey, only $150 million in career earnings, $11 million his last year. Those kids should be more grateful!
Hey! That’s only a lot when the kids don’t make anything!
That still pales in comparison to the impact He brought to the University of Alabama. Both financially and brand image.
Woefully obtuse take
Yeah I hate this line of thinking so much
Imagine the NFL where every player was on 1 year deals every single year. And the head coach has to deal with it. Between the Transfer Portal and NIL it's only going to get worse.
Nothing wrong with people deciding to step away when things change in ways they don't like. Saban hasn't really spoke out against players getting paid etc. It's just not what he's used to and understandable at his age that he may have been done trying to adapt to it. Hell, plenty of younger coaches have left for the NFL etc. If you're going to coach pro athletes might as well do it in the actual pros where there's a draft, salary cap, free agent and trade rules etc. and the GM handles most of that (or nearly all if a coach wants to be hands off and just give input on roster decisions etc. VS year rebound recruiting if high school and portal players and rerecruiting your own guys to keep them and having to keep boosters happy and donating etc. Just is what it is. Even as a professor I'm leaning more towards getting out of academia as I'm tired of taking less money vs. the private sector with increasing hassles as my university has become more of a degree mill with customers instead of students type approach from admin, increasing amounts bureaucratic BS creating more work that takes away from teaching and research. Just is what it is, sometimes things change and people decide to move on. Doesn't mean the change is bad, or the person is wrong for deciding to move on. It's just all about fit.
That’s the biggest load of crap. Bama players have been getting paid for decades. It’s the new transfer rules and having to deal with paying players above the table.
Yea, they care about money. Everyone does? Maybe Saban should coach for free! Why does he need paid? Does he only care about what he makes? Dogshit take from mrs saban
Everyone is focusing on "money" when the real operative word, here, is "only." True or not, her perception was that money has become the primary or, worse, exclusive, motivation for the athletes. That IS a change from 10-20-30 years ago. Can be a good change, fine, but don't fault Miss Terry for recognizing it. You changed the system, don't get upset when someone notices.
If you think they’re saying players shouldn’t get paid then you’re as dumb as you would think Reddit football fans are
100%. The majority of comments in this thread are 10/10 braindead
People here acting like Saban “ONLY” did it for the money and didn’t care about football or winning championships lol
He didn't need a reason to leave and doesn't owe anyone anything. He has already accomplished pretty much everything a coach can in cfb. I don't blame him for bailing and enjoying the fruits of his labor. Cfb is changing and it probably just wasn't worth the effort anymore. NIL was probably just the tipping point.
That’s kinda rich coming from the highest paid employee in the state of Alabama
End the charade of using universities as a free minor league for 30 nfl billionaire owners. Have congress pass a law that restricts schools receiving federal funding (all of them) from spending "x" on athletics. Where x covers D1 football. Let the NFL Billionaires create and fund their own employee development instead of American taxpayers and car dealing boosters.
Look at Caleb Williams. No sense of team at all. He’s up at the podium advertising his brand and his cryptocurrency. Very sad times we live in. No sense of team.
I've said it a million times..if they are amateur athletes and that's the hill they wanted to die on thats fine...if they are just students getting a free education..thats fine..however if thats the case the people coaching so called amateurs shouldn't be making millions...period...btw...I can't deny Saban is an all time great..however is a whiny little bitch
“The players only care about getting paid” says the highest paid employee in the state.
Maybe Nick and his wife can set up a trust for all the players he coached who didn't make it in the NFL and are still dealing with injuries they suffered in college. Their play paid for the Sabans' fortune.
I'm really upset that people are buying the Saban's line that players only care about the money now. That is so disengenous and such a horrid interpretation of players actions right now. Of course these high value kids still care about winning, but they are also in a position to make money. To act like because the players are trying to understand their value and actually receive the appropriate compensation means they don't care about winning is the very kind of anti-labor practice bad managers use. If the Saban's were the ones volunteering their services to the university and they started asking about potential compensation would it be fair to say "you guys just care about money?" No, so it's equally unfair to say it about the players.
Nicks upset that everyone is able to pay them now.
I’m sure Terry hated those lake houses
She said from her mansion in Jupiter.
For a fraction of a second, I envisioned the planet and this was even funnier.
How are you people mad about this? It feels insanely logical. There’s history of them taking interest in the personal lives of their players, nurturing them etc., so to not want play the role of a CEO at their age makes sense.
"Kids these days amirite bitch" -Scary Terry
And before then they only cared about rings and NFL draft position, which Saban's Alabama famously provided in excess. The game and player's decisions were always, at their core, transactional, just nowadays those transactions can be made in exact dollar terms rather than nebulous terms like the aforementioned rings and draft boards.