Nick Saban: NIL is out of control, 'not a sustainable model'

As the one-year anniversary of NIL comes around the corner, Alabama head coach Nick Saban has offered some criticism of the current system. During an interview with ESPN’s Chris Low, he talked about potential bidding wars between programs.

Saban’s comments came one day after he accused Texas A&M and coach Jimbo Fisher of buying “every player on their team” during the 2022 recruiting cycle. He later apologized on ESPNU Radio, but also shared some ideas for how to change the system.

However, Saban also shared his concerns about where the NIL landscape is heading. He called the current state of the game “out of control” with alleged pay-to-play models coming up across the sport.

“It’s gotten completely out of control and not a sustainable model,” Saban told Low. “It’s to the point where you’ve got these attorneys/agents calling collectives and saying, ‘Pay my player a hundred thousand dollars a year,’ and then they want their piece of that. They all want a cut.”

Nick Saban on NIL: ‘There are no guardrails on this road’

Saban also said he worries about programs losing players to other programs because of NIL opportunities — and he called for “guardrails” to prevent that.

“I don’t want to go down that road of bidding for players out of high school. I don’t,” Saban said. “But if we go through this recruiting class this year and we lose all the players, because they’re making a hundred thousand dollars going someplace else, then what can you do?

“The hard thing is there are no guardrails on this road. You can do whatever the hell you want, and in the end, most of this is not good for the players. You know, there are some terrible statistics out there about guys that transfer and how many of those guys graduate, terrible statistics on that. And we’re enticing a lot of that.”

Texas A&M put together the No. 1 recruiting class in the nation this year, according to the On3 Consensus Team Recruiting Ranking. Five Star Plus+ wide receiver Evan Stewart leads the group as the No. 8 recruit in the country from the class of 2022, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

All told, the Aggies brought in nine five-star recruits, including four of the eight Five Star Plus+ prospects in the country — players ranked by all four major recruiting media companies as a five-star. Alabama, meanwhile, came in just behind Texas A&M with the nation’s No. 2 recruiting class and brought in four five-stars, including three top-25 recruits.