Nick Saban isn’t worried about college sports, only his power within its money machine | Jones - pennlive.com

2022-05-21 17:22:51 By : Mr. Peter Tu

Alabama football coach Nick Saban (center), flanked by Crimson Tide men's basketball coach Nate Oats (left), speaks about the NCAA's name, image and likeness rules, and that every player in Texas A&M's recent recruiting class was "bought," during an event for The World Games 2022 on Wednesday in Birmingham.AL.com

Besides that it’s a couple of guys worth nine figures each bickering with each other, can you think of anything less interesting than this spat between Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher?

And do you need any more evidence that college football has become a regional sport than the reaction across the country? This is supposed to be a major story, I guess. And for people who must talk about the sport all year long, it’s a gift to have something like this drop into your lap in the deadest of all football months – May. But, outside of Bumble---k, USA, I sense tepid interest at best.

But the people who do care think it’s very very important. Which I find funny. It’s just a couple of guys seeing their immense clout begin to wane in a rapidly changing industry. The players are starting to get paid almost as much as they are. And it’s making them a little antsy and contentious.

In case you missed it, Saban started the whole snit. He was speaking at a function promoting something called The World Games in Birmingham. These are international sports that don’t make the cut at the Olympics –artistic roller skating, flag football, tug of war (yes, really), billiards, trampoline gymnastics, inline hockey, bowling, korfball and fistball, to name a few. I did not know this, but the Dutch are unbeatable at korfball. They dominate the world.

Saban got into his spiel while sitting in a cushy chair on a stage with a couple of other World Games aficionados, so maybe he was lulling himself into a false sense of security under the guise of anonymity. Anyway, before he got to the sensational stuff, Saban made a dubious assertion that the emergence of Name-Image-Likeness freedom would eventually mean that schools would have to begin paying players straight away and that this would decimate non-revenue sports – golf, baseball, gymnastics and the like. No mention of korfball.

See, the current trend seems to be in the direction of affluent boosters creating marketing collectives footing the bill themselves and buying players for their preferred schools.

Saban made the logical leap that eventually, if boosters’ sponsored players don’t get in the games enough, then the businessmen will become disgruntled and get out of the sponsorship racket. And how on earth is a coach supposed to guide young men toward a brighter future in such an atmosphere?

Then, Saban continued, it’ll be up to the schools to pay players directly. Which will eliminate funding for non-revenue sports. Talk about rhetorically hopping from stone to stone to cross a logical creek:

“For years and years and years, [non-revenue athletes have] been able to create a better life for themselves because they’ve been able to get scholarships and participate in college athletics. That’s what college athletics is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be something where people come and make money. And you make a decision about where you go to school based on how much money you’re gonna make.”

Ah, yes. Again, stressing the different business model for the player than the coach. Well, correct me if I’m in error here. But Nick Saban has always made decisions on which schools he’d work at based on how much money he could make. He’s from West Virginia. He never coached at West Virginia but for a year as a DB coach back in the ‘70s, between stays in Syracuse and Columbus. In fact, he’s been all over the damn country job-hopping from one lucrative opportunity to the next without regard for anything but how much he could make. What did Toledo, Ohio and Lansing, Mich., and Baton Rouge, La., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., offer Saban other than economic opportunity? Stimulating cultural institutions? Spectacular weather? Family ties?

No. None of these. They were schools that offered him head coaching jobs. It was all about the money. Dependent, of course, on how well developed Saban’s career had become and how much compensation he could demand at each juncture. He started at the mom-n-pop store of Kent State and has finished at arguably the most prestigious of all football shrines, Alabama.

In between, he guided Michigan State to an upset of #1 Ohio State in 1998, then Louisiana State to the 2003 national championship. He got it going in each place, but he always wanted more. In fact, between LSU and Bama, he took a stab at the NFL with the Miami Dolphins. That didn’t work out so well. Couldn’t seem to deal with players who had more clout than he did.

Anyway, back to that 6-minute Saban diatribe on what’s wrong with college football now and how he would fix it. He clearly wouldn’t have people like Fisher at Texas A&M, let alone Deion Sanders at Jackson State, flagrantly “buying” players with these businessmen’s collectives:

“You’ve read about ‘em. You know who they are. We were second in recruiting last year; A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team, made a deal for name, image and likeness. Aight? We didn’t buy one player.”

At least, not technically. Saban apparently liked it better the old way when the donor money was funneled through back channels and cleansed by pretend jobs.

Well, Fisher and Sanders didn’t like his tone. They both fired back. Fisher even called an impromptu press conference just to call him a fraud and a narcissist.

1. Nobody cares about Nick Saban’s troubles.

2. Nobody cares what anyone named Jimbo thinks about anything.

3. Whoever tells you college football is in trouble probably actually means his relevance is in trouble.

Bigtime college coaches are grappling with one thing here, and it isn’t The Health of the Game. It’s the health of their influence. Saban is squinting up the highway and thinks he might see the silhouette of Dolphins Redux. Suddenly, he can imagine players who are not only his equal but just might have even more power than he does. He can’t have that.

Fisher doesn’t mind. Neither does Sanders. Any shift in the power structure can only benefit them.

And the players making out with 7-figure NIL deals? I’d say they’re creating quite a better life for themselves. And, to them, college football has never looked healthier.

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