Nick Saban Brings Up Clemson, Luke Ferrelli Situation During Senate Hearing

During a hearing involving the Senate Commerce Committee, the legendary head coach brought up a January situation that involved the Clemson Tigers.

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban mentioned the tampering incident involving former Clemson linebacker Luke Ferrelli on Wednesday. | Matthew Emmons-Imagn Images

Over the last several weeks, the Clemson Tigers have began to see movement about a situation back in January, and one of the best coaches in college football history spoke about it on Wednesday. 

A United States Senate Commerce Committee hearing occurred regarding the situation of the “Protect College Sports Act”, a bipartisan effort that is looking to balance out the regulations of the college sports world. That morning, legendary Alabama head coach Nick Saban spoke in favor of amending the bill, bringing up a handful of topics. 

While discussing NIL collective money and players leaving more money, he brings up the transfer portal. Now, since players have agents to do the talking, he believes the game is losing focus on what matters most. 

“Now, we have this unbelievable amount of players that get in the portal every year, and we have nothing to control agents,” Saban said on Wednesday. ‘We have nothing to control tampering.”

Then, he spoke on Clemson regarding the situation with linebacker Luke Ferrelli. Ferrelli, as the story goes, was a committed Tiger before Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding reached out asking what his buyout was. After bringing up the number, it was enough for the Cal transfer to leave, despite having an apartment, car and taking part in on-campus workouts during the offseason. 

“Clemson had a player that was on campus for a whole week,” Saban said, “and they come and get him off the campus and take him some place else.”

While it’s unethical, it’s taking away from bigger themes that the college games was built on, mainly, education. That was a takeaway from head coach Dabo Swinney that he was looking to fix as well. He spoke on that issue while exposing Golding for what occurred with Ferrelli back in January. 

The Clemson head coach also spoke about how the calendar is screwed up, but he mentions a central idea that he thinks the game is missing. 

“If you’re thinkg about fixing the calendar, I think, for me, the first thing we must think about it, what’s best for the player?” he said. “What’s best for the education of the player?”

Similarly, Saban brings up education, saying that the age of NIL has strayed away from the core values of why people should be going to college anyway. 

“So, these things going on in college football are aboslutely not what anybody of us signed up for relative to the education of institutions that we all tried to represent,” he said. 

Over the course of this process, the NCAA revealed that an investigation was brought up after Swinney called out Golding and the Rebels back in January. Overall, though, it’s been an issue that has many scrambling for solutions. 

Perhaps this “Protect College Sports Act” will change things. Only time will tell if it is passed, as the bigger conferences like the SEC and the Big 10 have been pushing back to prevent the current policies.