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Nick Saban Calls for the Establishment of a College Football Commissioner

Could a commissioner help ease some of the issues currently plaguing college football? It’s complicated.

Tyler Lauletta

Nick Saban thinks it’s time for college football to establish some new leadership.
Nick Saban thinks it’s time for college football to establish some new leadership. / @CollegeGameDay / X

Nick Saban might no longer be the coach of the most dominant program in college football, but his presence still looms large on the sport as a whole. In his new role with ESPN’s College GameDay over the past two years, Saban has branded himself as a voice of reason of sorts in the Wild West era of NIL, the playoffs, and this year, a wild coaching carousel.

On conference championship Saturday, Saban once again pitched that the sport needs some established leadership in a more formal role: a commissioner.

“I think that we need to have a commissioner who’s kind of over all the conferences, as well as a competition committee who sort of defines the rules of how we’re going to play the game. Because that’s what we don’t have right now,” Saban said.

“We used to have contracts, for coaches and for players, that defined what's your academic responsibilities, when can you transfer, what’s your obligation to the school. We don’t have that now. And if you really don’t support that, you’re kind of supporting a little bit of anarchy, which we have right now. So I think having a commissioner, national commissioner, having a governing body, certainly would enhance [the game]. Because I do think that the College Football Playoff has kind of camouflaged some of these issues, because there’s so much interest in college football because of the playoff.”

The pitch for a college football commissioner is not exactly a new one, but the value of such a central figure for the sport has been highlighted by an overactive coaching carousel and an extremely tight race for the College Football Playoff.

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What would a commissioner of college football do?

The college football schedule has come under scrutiny with multiple coaches set to take their team to the playoff but jump ship to a new team next year. Some of those coaches are getting the chance to coach out their run with their current schools, but Lane Kiffin, who left Ole Miss for LSU, is not.

A commissioner, along with in Saban’s pitch a central governing body, could establish a schedule that prevents schools from poaching coaches until the end of the current season. They could also potentially provide more direct guidance to schools as the NIL era continues to take shape before our eyes.

Somewhat ironically, Saban has been floated by many as the perfect man to take on the role of commissioner. Saban doesn’t seem interested, or at least isn’t currently advocating for the gig, but would be a pretty easy choice for any newly established central hub of leadership in the sport.

That said, one of the reasons a “commissioner” keeps getting floated as a potential solution to the current problems in college football is that the role is undefined enough to sound like it could make a difference.

While it’s easier to think that the issues of the calendar and the coaching carousel and NIL just came up out of the blue and their negative impacts on the sport are the result of a lack of a controlling body, they are actually the result of decisions, made by people who currently have power over said decisions, largely driven by dollars. Unless the hypothetical commissioner was given an inordinate amount of power, those problems won't just disappear overnight.

That said, some might think that an inordinate amount of power in the hands of one benevolent figure who loves the sport may be preferable to that power being spread across varied hands with even more varied interests. For now, the idea of a commissioner of college football remains an interesting thought experiment, but if Saban wants to start campaigning for the gig, he’d certainly have a strong base of support.

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Tyler Lauletta
TYLER LAULETTA

Tyler Lauletta is a staff writer for the Breaking and Trending News Team/team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI, he covered sports for nearly a decade at Business Insider, and helped design and launch the OffBall newsletter. He is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, and remains an Eagles and Phillies sicko. When not watching or blogging about sports, Tyler can be found scratching his dog behind the ears.

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