Nick Saban reveals what's next for CFB, why NCAA needs protection moving forward

Nick Saban sat down for an interview recently with ESPN’s Chris Low and discussed a range of issues from his 2022 Alabama team to the state of college football, at large. With a news-filled offseason coming to a close, Saban isn’t sure where the sport is headed, precisely, but is confident in a few things.

First, Saban thinks there will be a bigger playoff at some point, though he didn’t specify when or how many teams. He also thinks, in a broader sense, that the inability of the NCAA — or any governing body — to issue or enforce rules consistently is not a sustainable course.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” Saban said. I think we’ll have a bigger playoff at some point in time in the future. I don’t know where the megaconferences deal’s going. I don’t know how it’s going to impact the NCAA. But it really doesn’t matter, in my opinion, what the governing organization is. If they don’t have protection from litigation, it will be really hard to implement any sort of guidelines and rules. Because every major sports venue has ’em. Right now in college football, we don’t have the same guidelines that we’ve always had and until some governing body gets some protection from litigation, I don’t think we will have.”

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This echoes much of what Saban said in the offseason about not being clear on what the rules of engagement were regarding NIL deals, recruiting and inducements. While the NCAA expressly prohibits the use of NIL deals as a recruiting inducement, there is no doubt that any number of schools — or more specifically their NIL collectives — have offered NIL as a recruiting inducement.

Saban has repeatedly criticized the uneven playing field that has resulted from the NCAA allowing NIL but not stringently enforcing the rules around it, in his opinion. He doesn’t seem to care if NIL for recruiting is ultimately allowed — he seems more upset that different people are playing by different rules in assembling and managing their rosters.

It’s something Saban has harped on throughout the offseason, too. Remember the imbroglio with Jimbo Fisher?

And at SEC Media Days in July, Saban was on a similar soapbox.

“There’s got to be some uniformity and protocol of how name, image and likeness is implemented. I think there’s probably a couple of factors that are important in that,” Saban said. “How does this impact competitive balance in college athletics? Is there transparency to maintain fairness across the board in terms of college athletics?…How does this impact recruiting? On the recruiting trail right now, there’s a lot of people using this as inducements to go to their schools by making promises.”