U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) hosted a roundtable discussion on Tuesday morning to address the state of college athletics and issues that are fundamentally reshaping the sport like Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and the NCAA transfer portal.
Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban spoke openly to members of Congress and the public to share his perspective on the changing world of college sports as it relates to a regulatory framework with sustainable future.
Sen. Cruz asked Saban just how much NIL factored into his recent decision to step away.
“All the things that I believed in for all these years, 50 years of coaching, no longer exist in college athletics,” Saban said. “It always was about developing players, it was always about helping people be more successful in life.”
Saban shared the story of how his wife, Ms. Terry, opened his eyes to the idea that the game is no longer what it once was.
“We have all the recruits over on Sunday with their parents for breakfast and she would always meet with the mothers and talk about how she was going to help and impact with their sons and how they would be well taken care of,” Saban said of Ms. Terry.
“And she came to me right before I retired and said ‘why are we doing this?’ And I said ‘what do you mean?’ She said ‘all they care about is how much you’re gonna pay them, they don’t care about how much you’re gonna develop them which is what we’ve always done so why are we doing this?’”
“So to me that was kind of a red alert that we really are creating a circumstance here that’s not beneficial to the development of young people. Which is why I always did what I did and why I always liked college athletics better than the NFL.”
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Saban emphasized that he is not against the idea of NIL and that he wants players to create a brand for themselves — but that has cascaded into a pay-for-play system to the detriment of the sport.
“I want their quality of life to be good. Name, image, and likeness is a great opportunity for them to create a brand for themselves. I’m not against that at all. But to come up with some kind of a system that still can help the development of young people I think is paramount to the future of college athletics,” Saban said.
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Michael Brauner is a Senior Sports Analyst and Contributing Writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @MBraunerWNSP
