Nick Saban came to Birmingham on Wednesday night to help promote this summer’s World Games, but no one told me he was going to demonstrate the martial art of Muaythai all over the good reputation of Texas A&M.
And the University of Miami.
And … Jackson State?
Nick, Deion Sanders was asleep. Someone had to wake up Coach Prime and tell him you were throwing fists in the dark. Just so wrong. Understandably, Coach Prime came up swinging.
“You best believe I will address that LIE Coach SABAN told tomorrow,” Sanders said to the late-night Twitter crowd.
The event featuring Saban was at popular Birmingham nightspot The Fennec. It was billed as a “fireside chat” to promote the World Games. Saban instead made the executive decision to go full World Star. There is an axis-tilting revolution taking place currently in the world of college sports based on the ability of players finally being able to earn money through their name, image and likeness (NIL). The topic set off Saban like we’ve never heard him rant before … or maybe any football coach ever.
“We were second in recruiting last year,” Saban said. “[Texas] A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player. Aight?
“But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to sustain that in the future, because more and more people are doing it. It’s tough.”
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You know in a Guy Ritchie flick when the soundtrack catches and the camera cuts to a hard angle? It’s letting the audience know that chaos is imminent and impending doom will not be easily thwarted by the idiotic actions of men. College football is now officially at that moment.
Fireworks? Nah. Not even close. Fireworks are cute. Saban’s incendiary words on a random Wednesday night in the middle of May are going to set off a firestorm throughout the SEC and college football.
It was building to this conflagration over the past few months, and maybe now the best thing for college football is to just watch it burn so it can start anew. At least we know that’ll be more entertaining than Senate hearings on NIL.
“We have a rule right now that said you cannot use name, image and likeness to entice a player to come to your school,” Saban said. “Hell, read about it in the paper! I mean, Jackson State paid a guy a million dollars last year that was a really good Division I player to come to school.
“It was in the paper and they bragged about it. Nobody did anything about it.”
Burn, baby, burn.
College football coaching, historically, hasn’t been a finger-pointing profession because everyone has always understood the deal. Under no circumstances could the black-market system of paying recruits be discussed or even acknowledged. Clearly, the rules have changed. Saban now apparently wants to use the media as a check to balance a system so broken that it uses boosters to pay players through third-party slush funds because the schools will not just do the right thing and cut in the guys on the field.
Why? Taxes and the IRS.
Here’s the part that Saban left out of his rant, though. Texas A&M was using those third-party NIL collectives to pay players (allegedly) because Texas law allows for that to happen. Until January, Alabama had a state law regulating NIL so that boosters couldn’t be involved. The idea that Saban was somehow being noble by not helping to pay recruits smells of gaslighting fiction. Auburn would have turned Alabama in for breaking state law and vice versa.
So what happened?
Alabama and Auburn had the NIL Act regulating the industry repealed from state law. The legislature just tossed it out in the name of Alabama’s state schools keeping up with the Joneses.
And I’m not here to say it should have remained on the books. The kids need to be paid for their parts in this multi-billion dollar industry. Someone has to call out Saban for being dishonest, though.
He said Alabama was allowing players to be paid “the right way,” but there is no wrong way when everyone is following their own rules.
When it comes to Saban, just always know this one thing above all others. There is always an agenda, and that agenda is being able to recruit the best football players to the University of Alabama. Saban has failed to do that over the last year, and he’s mad.
There are truth bombs, and then there are Saban rants and the two should never be confused for one another.
To be honest, Saban sounded a little scared. I’m just not sure if he fears his grip is slipping on coaching football, or if he’s afraid this new change to the system will force him to tighten his death grip once and for all.
Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama: A season of hope and the making of Nick Saban’s ‘ultimate team’”. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.