WATCH: Nick Saban hammers collectives, coaches' usage of NIL in recruiting

The discussion around NIL continues to heat up, and Alabama head coach Nick Saban offered some strong comments about it Wednesday night during an event in Birmingham.

Just before he called out Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M, Saban addressed the state of NIL and NIL collectives around college football. He also said head coaches around the game now how much their respective collectives play a role in recruiting.

Saban on Name, Image and Likeness (NIL)

“The team made $3 million off of NIL last season between 25 different players.”

“The more supporters we have for UA in all sports, the better for our program. The thing I fear is we’ll have to eventually just start paying the players.” pic.twitter.com/Dsavek99Ix

— Brett Greenberg (@74Talk) May 19, 2022

“The issue and the problem with name, image and likeness is coaches trying to create an advantage for themselves by going out and [saying], ‘OK, how can we use this to our advantage?'” Saban said. “They created what’s called a collective. A collective is an outside marketing agency that’s not tied to the university that’s funded by alumni from the university, and they give this collective millions of dollars. And that marketing agency then funnels it to the players, and the coach actually knows how much money’s in the collective, so he knows how much he can promise every player. That’s not what name, image and likeness was supposed to be. That’s what it’s become, and that’s the problem in college athletics right now. Now, every player is saying, ‘Well, what am I going to get?’

“My philosophy is my job is to create a platform for our players to create value for themselves and their future by becoming better people, by graduating from school and developing a career on the field and by seeing if they can develop a career on the field and play at the next level in the NFL. Our players have made $1.7 billion in the NFL since 2010.”

Nick Saban: NIL is ‘a great concept for players’

Earlier in his answer, Saban reaffirmed his stance on NIL. Even though he previously said he didn’t like where the game was going between NIL and the transfer portal, he said he’s in favor of NIL deals. He also discussed how Alabama dealt with the new landscape and provided numbers to show how his players cashed in on everything that came their way.

“It’s a great concept for players,” Saban said. “Players have always been allowed to work. This is just a different opportunity for them to make money by working and using their own name, image and likeness whether it’s signing autographs, whether it’s doing commercials for some company or whatever. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I told our players when this thing started to get agents, to get representation so [they] create opportunities for [themselves].

“Last year, our players created $3 million in opportunities for themselves by doing it the right way. And I have no problem with that and nobody had a problem on our team with that because the guys that got the money earned it. Now there were only 25 guys on our team that had the opportunity to earn money.”