It’s a new day and age in college football, one marked by chaos and a lack of guardrails in place when it comes to NIL, the transfer portal, and tampering — all wrapped up together.

Though it is against the rules in writing for teams to ‘offer’ players on other teams huge NIL deals to enter the portal, there’s no one in charge to enforce it and it’s led to a Wild West type system where they really are no rules. Though they are written, there is no incentive – or rather threat – to follow them.

This chaos was encapsulated perfectly this week when Alabama Crimson Tide freshman cornerback and former five-star recruit Jaylen Mbakwe entered the transfer portal amid rumors that he received a seven-figure offer from another school only to pull his name out of the portal and elect to stay in Tuscaloosa.

RELATED: Nick Saban, U.S. Senators want to regulate NIL before it’s too late

In the aftermath of the Mbakwe situation, Alabama AD Greg Byrne released a statement to his social media ripping the current system, telling of the million dollar offers, and pleading with Tide fans to join the school’s NIL collective Yea Alabama.

Alabama fans,
 
Over the past few years, there have been drastic changes in college athletics. We have been careful during this transitional period to protect our position at the top of college athletics while being mindful to listen, engage and learn from our generous…

— Greg Byrne (@Greg_Byrne) December 18, 2024

Byrne’s message was sent initially to email subscribers of Alabama Athletics and was posted shortly after on his social media accounts. It reads in full:

Alabama fans,

Over the past few years, there have been drastic changes in college athletics. We have been careful during this transitional period to protect our position at the top of college athletics while being mindful to listen, engage and learn from our generous supporters, proud alumni and unrivaled fans to make sure that we protect our great traditions here at Alabama. But there’s a time for talk and a time for action. Now is a time for action.

Although we have been competitive from an NIL standpoint, our competition has us in their sights and are actively trying to surge ahead with NIL. You have heard examples of other teams using promises of million-dollar paydays to lure away our players or convince them not to come to Alabama. It is time for the Bama Nation to fight back.

Under the new model of college athletics, which is the result of an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, a university can succeed if their fans purchase authentic NIL from student-athletes. The good news is when [Yea Alabama] was created last year, the focus was on providing our fans with a legitimate product rather than booster inducements. [Yea Alabama] delivers exclusive content and access you cannot get anywhere else. We also have a plan to grow [Yea Alabama’s] offerings with more videos, features and news in 2025.

A subscription to [Yea Alabama] isn’t about the now; it’s about the future. It’s about roster retention for future seasons – keeping our legends in Crimson. It’s about attracting and developing the best recruits in the country to represent the script A. You being a part of the team has never been more important.

At Alabama, we’ve not measured ourselves against our competition. We are the standard, and that measurement is against the mirror and against a rich and proud history, but it’s impossible to ignore what is taking place in college athletics. Hungry fan bases are acting decisively to give their respective programs competitive advantages. We must respond. We are Alabama.

Join [Yea Alabama] today!