Is NIL changing the balance of power in college football?
Institutionalized pay for play is changing the dynamics of college football, will it change the competitive landscape?
Nick Saban has trended a lot on Twitter.com for his takes about NIL and its impact on the game of college football, routinely stirring up some real storms in part due to his willingness to name particular institutions that are not Alabama.
Saban himself doesn’t much like the NIL era and he’s been making some hilarious comments (considering the sourcing) about the value of parity and the dangers of NIL inducements to the sanctity of the college game.
Click the image for the tweet and full video, I can’t just embed it here because of the Substack/Twitter ongoing kerfuffle. Amongst Saban’s talking points has been a wish for parity in the college game, a parity which has never existed and which would run exceptionally contrary to the nature of his run as a head coach.
There’s been good reporting done by Steven Godfrey on how under the table pay-for-play works, or worked, in the college game. There are always those who will say things like, “well sure, that’s how it is in the SEC. But here in (morally evolved town) we don’t do that.” The people saying these things often root for programs that somehow successfully recruit against those SEC despite supposedly countering large cash offers with “the value of the degree.”
If you think I’m referring to your school I probably am because college football recruiting during the BCS era (probably always) involved pay-for-play for the schools chasing blue chip (4-star or higher) recruits. In the BCS/playoff era, Alabama repeatedly finished ranked no. 1 in the country while pulling 5-star players from hotly contested regions. How did they do that?
Even in this last cycle where Saban was complaining about losing players over NIL guarantees he didn’t feel it’d be right to make, Alabama ended up finishing no. 1 in the country and signing seven 5-star talents.
He’s very concerned though about how recruiting is changing, the lack of parity, and he has a few schools in particular he feels are violating the game.
This particular callout is really interesting and that's where our story takes us today.
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