'Make it like the NFL:' In latest gripes around NIL, Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin helplessly ponder professionalizing college football

MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Over the years, Nick Saban has offered his fair share of warnings to the rest of college football, and while the sport has not always heeded his advice, folks always listen. 

Well, perk back up, people. Nick Saban is talking parity in college football again. 

“If you think there’s disparity in college football now, there’s going to be a lot more in the future,” the seven-time national champion head coach said without a hint of irony Tuesday at the 2023 SEC Spring Meetings.

“I made the statement years ago and got very criticized for it: Is this what we want college football to become? So, now it’s kind of becoming that. I don’t think it’s going to be a level playing field because some people are showing a willingness to spend more than others.”

A decade ago, Saban’s shot was about the outbreak of spread offenses. Then he embraced the offensive changes and rattled off four more national titles. But his latest cautionary warning is on a far more serious subject: NIL masquerading as pay-for-play and the future of imbalance in college football.  

“Name, image and likeness is a good thing for players to be able to make money,” Saban said. “But when it turns into pay for play, now you’re getting into a different area.”

And the real problem: These coaches have no control in fixing what they want changed in the sport.

SEC COACHES CONTINUE TO RAISE CONCERNS AROUND NIL

Like water is wet — here in Destin and everyone else, too — almost every SEC coach who talked this week complained about a lack of oversight, legislation and guardrails around NIL. But immediate help doesn’t appear on the way, as dead-locked Congress is unlikely to agree on (or pass) regulation around name, image and likeness.

In an attempt to combat some of the ongoing problems, the SEC plans to “align its 12 state NIL laws in an effort to hand power to the conference office to oversee, police and even set policy for NIL,” per a report by Sports Illustrated.  Several SEC states — Missouri, Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma — recently cleared the way for schools to operate their own in-house collectives as a branch of the university’s overall fundraising arm, but these radical state laws only open up the door for potential further in-discrepancies between schools.

“What we have now is we have some states and some schools are in some states that are investing a lot more money in terms of managing their roster than others, and I think this is going to create a real competitive disadvantage for some in the future,” Saban said.

“And it’s also going to create an imbalance in the competitive nature of the sport, which that’s not good for the sport.”

The SEC has collectives with budgets in the multi-millions, while others schools across the country can barely cobble together six figures. Even within the SEC, there are real disparities among programs’ NIL budgets. 

“There’s all the head coaches in here, and I don’t know if anybody has that answer of what to do (on fixing issues around NIL),” Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin said. 

“They know what they don’t like. They know what to complain about, but no one really has the answer of what exactly to do.”

LANE KIFFIN, NICK SABAN PONDER NFL MODEL AS NIL SOLUTION

Kiffin made a subtle jab at Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher, noting that NIL is the dominating topic surrounding all of college football right now — from prep recruiting, to the transfer portal to roster management — despite some suggesting otherwise.      

“People say certain things and it cracks me up. I struggle letting it go sometimes,” Kiffin said.  

“When someone says that NIL has nothing to do with why someone signs at their place, and they sign the best class in this history of recruiting, I struggle with that statement.

“NIL is what kids choose. They don’t choose (the school) for the size of the weight room, or how many bench presses, or whether they have a personalized computer in their locker.”

Kiffin made sure to note he doesn’t blame players for chasing as much money as they can through NIL, but the lack of transparency around private six-and-seven-figure deals has created chaos within the sport. 

“You can’t fault them. You have 17- or 18-year-old kids or families a lot of times that don’t have very much in financial resources and here’s your chance to get paid,” said Kiffin, who compared blind NIL deals to buying beach property in Destin without any knowledge of what the other homes in the area are valued at.

“In the NFL, you have (certified) agents and you know what contracts are. Here, you have to filter through all the fluff of what someone says the kid has, or what the kid says that he has.

“I don’t fault the kids’ agents or runners, because they are just trying to get the most that they can get, so there’s a lot of stuff thrown out there that isn’t accurate. … We’re going to have issues being leveraged by kids or families or agents.”

The most natural solution?

“Unionize it, make it like the NFL. If it’s going to be the same for everyone, I think that’s better than what we have now,” Saban said.

At some point in the near future, college football will become an amateur professional league. We’re starring down a path where players will become employees of a conference or school.

“We are the NFL right now. We just don’t have contracts,” Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze said. 

There are complicating matters with labor laws and unions — “You solve these six problems, but you open up six pages of problems,” Kiffin noted of an NFL model — but at least contracts and a salary cap would eliminate many of these coaches basic gripes around NIL. But again, as Kiffin noted, the coaches don’t have final say on solving the problem.

“I think back to all those discussions and it just makes you think ‘Man, I wish we could have really seen all of this coming,’ and maybe put some parameters around it, but the horses left the barn now,” Freeze added.

Well, giddy up.

While Nick Saban, who makes over $11 million annually, can say with a straight face that college football is a “revenue-producing sport” and “not a business,” there’s more money flowing than ever before. 

There’s never been parity in college football, but that’s not what these complaints are really about. It’s about a lack of agency and control. So if these coaches are serious about solving legitimate issues around NIL, then they should truly push their school presidents for professionalizing the sport — sooner than later — because Saban said it best himself: “It’s better than what we have now.”