Nick Saban tells Congress how to fix NIL in college football
Ex-Alabama head coach Nick Saban has endorsed the idea of sharing revenue directly with college football players and other NCAA athletes when speaking to a panel that included U.S. Senators focused on NIL issues in Washington, D.C.
"If we had some sort of revenue sharing proposition that did not make student-athletes employees... I think that may be the long-term solution," Saban said to the panel, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
"You could create a better quality of life for student-athletes, you could still emphasize development, you can still create brand and athletic development with a system like that and it would be equal in all institutions," Saban added. "You couldn't raise more money at one school to create a competitive advantage at another."
Ever since NIL was introduced to college football and other sports nearly three years ago, the NCAA has remained largely unable to enforce a single set of rules, with individual states taking the lead on their own legislation, resulting in confusion among coaches, schools, and other personnel involved in the practice.
Boosters have created so-called "collectives," independently-run groups designed to sign players to NIL contracts on behalf of their preferred schools, which has only increased the sense of confusion around rules and regulations.
"We have collectives that in some places are raising huge amounts of money and going to compete against places that do not have the same resources to raise those kinds of funds to pay players," Saban said.
"You have a pay-for-play system and a free agency system that has no guidelines, so there's no competitive balance. I think there's going to be a lot of places that will say that and we'll create a caste system where the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer and eventually fans will look at it and say, 'I don't really want to watch this game.'"
More college football from SI: Top 25 Rankings | Schedule | Teams
Follow College Football HQ: Bookmark | Rankings | Picks