Nick Saban cites academics, graduation rates as biggest concerns with NIL, transfer portal

As he settles in to his new role as an ESPN analyst, Nick Saban is looking at college football from a different perspective. Instead of being on the sidelines and on the recruiting trail, he’s looking at the game from a wider lens.

While he was the head coach at Alabama, Saban spoke about the need for “competitive balance” when it comes to NIL and the transfer portal. But as he looks at the current landscape ahead of the 2024 season – his first in retirement – he pointed out another issue during SEC Media Days.

While Greg Sankey was on the SEC Network set Monday afternoon, Saban addressed the educational aspect. He argued that part of the conversation is important when assessing the state of the game.

“One of the things that bothers me most about all of what’s happened in college sports right now is I’ve been around long enough to remember when we didn’t have any standards towards education,” Saban said. “We didn’t have any progress toward a degree rules, we didn’t have great graduation rates. And we worked for 25 years to get it to where we have really, really positive results when it comes to academics, graduation, degree programs. All those things.

“And I’m afraid that this transferring and what’s happening right now in college athletics is going to impact that, and I don’t want to see five years from now, a whole bunch of 30 for 30s about guys who made a little bit of money when they were in college, but they don’t have very much success in their life now because they didn’t prepare themselves for life after football. Those two things, to me, are the biggest concerns that I have.”

In December 2023, the NCAA announced FBS football had a Graduation Success Rate of 84%. That came after more than 2,900 players entered the portal during the 2022 cycle. At the time, that set a record for the most players to hit the open market – a number that continues to grow. During the 2023-24 transfer cycle, more than 3,200 players entered the portal.

But Sankey said he, too, has concerns about graduation rates when it comes to the NIL and transfer eras. An avid reader, he cited a book he recently read to illustrate his point when it comes to setting athletes up for their post-playing careers.

“I share those … in fact, I just read a John Grisham book for the second time called Bleachers,” Sankey said. “It’s fiction, but it’s about a high school football team and a guy comes back – he was the star quarterback – and the observation I read, it defined this line. That basically, the worst thing you can be is at your peak when you’re 18. Where do you go from there in life? And I paraphrase that a little bit. I don’t know that that’s the great philosophical wisdom of the day, but that’s reality.

“Life is a building process. I’m about to turn 60, and somebody called me in 2002 about submitting my resume to be SEC commissioner in 2002 – 38 – I’m like, ‘Hey, I can do that.’ I was no more ready for that than I was to fly a spaceship. You went through your transitions, you have to grow. There are now hacks for this, there are not shortcuts to growth. You have to do the hard work, and that’s part of what happens in sports.”