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Bama News
Saban proposes equal pay to avoid ‘caste system’
“I don’t think what we’re doing right now is a sustainable model,” Saban told the Associated Press.
Offering his latest thoughts on the evolving state of college football, Alabama coach Nick Saban proposed that his school guarantees a set amount of NIL money for every player on its football team.
“We give everybody the same medical care, academic support, food service. Same scholarship,” Saban said in a recent interview with the Associated Press published Wednesday. “So if we’re going to do this, then everybody is going to benefit equally. I’m not going to create a caste system on our team.”
College athletes have been able to profit off their names, images and likenesses since last July, weeks after the United States Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the NCAA could not cap athletes’ benefits without violating antitrust laws.
Players have been able to strike deals with companies and earn revenue in the months since, with third-party “collectives” of boosters emerging to organize deals for a particular school’s players. A collective called “High Tide Traditions” for Alabama players was launched earlier this week.
But Saban in February expressed frustration with how the quickly-expanding infrastructure of NIL collectives has played a role in recruiting, saying, “People are making deals with high school players to go to their school,” and, “That’s not why we did this.”
Saban reiterated similar points to the Associated Press this week.
“I don’t think what we’re doing right now is a sustainable model,” he said, adding that schools can “basically buy players” in recruiting these days.
“I mean, if that’s what we want college football to be, I don’t know.”
Saban made national headlines last July when he said quarterback Bryce Young had earned close to $1 million in NIL revenue before his first start for Alabama, and Saban acknowledged to the AP that Alabama players, “probably made as much or more than anybody in the country” last season.
Even though Alabama’s football program can benefit from the new landscape of college football, Saban believes competitive balance for the entire sport is at risk. He continued to compare the current system to NFL free agency but without the NFL’s salary cap.
“So there’s going to have to be some changes implemented, some kind of way to still create a level playing field,” he said. “And there is no salary cap. So whatever school decides they want to pay the most, they have the best chance to have the best team. And that’s never been college football, either.”
Saban also warned last summer about the imbalance NIL would cause within locker rooms, also comparing it to NFL systems where certain positions and players receive higher salaries because of their performance and profiles.
I hope it doesn’t affect team chemistry across the board, in terms of how people respond to that and how players respond to that,” he said at SEC media days last July.
Although he continued to resist the idea of a “caste system” on his team, Saban did not elaborate further about a plan to distribute NIL revenue evenly among players in his the published portion of his interview with the AP, or how that would comply with applicable laws.
But Saban believes that equal pay to players could be used as a draw in recruiting.
“You’re going to have kids out there that say, ‘Well, I can get a better deal going someplace else,’ and they’ll go there,” he said. “But you’re also going to have people that see the light and say, ‘Yeah, they’ve got a good history of developing players. They got a good history of developing people, they got a great graduation rate and that value is more important.’ And they’re distributing money to everybody in the organization.”
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney predicted a “complete blowup” of college football in an interview last week with ESPN, proposing Power 5 schools breaking off as a separate entity. Saban said he is “all for” players being compensated but believes there must be a commitment to the school, too, after transfer rules were also loosened last year.
“There also has to be some responsibility on both ends, which you could call a contract,” he told the AP. “So that you have an opportunity to develop people in a way that’s going to help them be successful.”
