Nick Saban discusses impact of NIL on college football

The Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) era has officially arrived in college sports, and the impacts have been dramatic already. Ahead of Monday’s National Championship, Alabama head coach Nick Saban discussed the impacts NIL has had on college sports, also offering some suggestions on how to improve it in the future.

Saban believes that NIL is good for the players, but that there have been some unintentional downfalls when it comes to recruiting.

“Name, image & likeness is a positive thing for players,” Saban said. “They’ve got the opportunity to earn money. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. What is concerning is how is that’s used to get players to decide where they’re going to school. I don’t think that was the intention.”

If the NCAA doesn’t find a way to properly manage the NIL landscape, it could have negative impacts on the competitive balance across college football, according to Saban.

“We need some kind of national legislation to control that,” Saban suggested. “There will be an imbalance as to who dominates college football if it isn’t regulated.”

Saban knows that many Alabama players have done well in the NIL era

On3 recently created a way to quantify how valuable athletes are based on their brands, the On3 NIL 100. The rankings contain recruits and current athletes based on the On3 NIL Valuation. In the On3 NIL 100, which ranks the 100 most valuable brands among college athletes, Alabama is very well-represented.

Most of Alabama’s representation in the NIL 100 comes from football, meaning that Saban truly is no stranger to the new landscape of college football.

Alabama football has seven players represented in the NIL 100: Bryce Young (No. 3, $1.8 million), Will Anderson (No. 8, $718,000), Jameson Williams (No. 21, $364,000), John Metchie (No. 41, $209,000), Brian Robinson (No. 77, $137,000), Evan Neal (No. 79, $134,000), Jordan Battle (No. 86, $127,000), and Ga’Quincy ‘Kool-Aid’ McKinstry (No. 99, $117,000).

The On3 NIL Valuation is an index that looks to set the standard market value for both high school and college-level athletes. The NIL valuation does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals an athlete has completed to date. It rather signifies an athlete’s value at a certain moment in time.

The NIL valuation is comprised of a number of dynamic data points that focus on two primary factors – an athlete’s social media presence and their level of athletic performance.

A base valuation is generated from the number of followers on each social media platform an athlete has (Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok). Each platform is weighted differently based on the number of marketing dollars that brands and advertisers typically spend on each.