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Nick Saban, now arguably the GOAT of College Football coaches, sent shockwaves through the sport when he announced his retirement from the Alabama Crimson Tide on January 10th. Even though it should never be a huge surprise when a highly accomplished 72-year-old man with a comfortable future ahead of him finally hangs it up, it was still something that very few saw coming when it did.
The man who once famously promised he wasn’t going to be the head coach at Alabama became the best the program had ever had, and that includes Bear Bryant.
Okay, that last part’s debatable.
But Saban’s influence on college football isn’t.
Even though he’d signed a contract that would have made him the highest paid coach in the sport through 2030, Saban – like a whole lot of other coaches – had grown frustrated with the way the sport was and is devolving into a miniature and far less structured version of professional football.
Unless you’re brand new to the sport and fully embrace the Deion Sanders model of recruiting – using the Transfer Portal and Name, Image and Likeness enticements to overhaul rosters after every season – the total lack of guidelines, guardrails and rules surrounding how rosters are put together now – and how student athletes are treated – is a giant turn off.
Sure, you can say Saban and others are old men yelling at clouds, but the fact remains that the sport was better before all the rules were tossed out the window.
Remember when SMU got the death penalty for paying players under the table?
Today’s NCAA football (and basketball) recruiting is now about buying players just like that, plain and simple. For Saban and a whole lot of others, it sucks.
So the GOAT is retiring from coaching and by all accounts will head back to his lake house to relax, perhaps agree to do some TV work next fall, and putter around the house.
How long do we expect all that to last? How long until Nick Saban gets the urge to fix college football?
He probably already has that itch, and he’s likely to start to scratch it sooner rather than later. As ideas continue to be tossed around regarding the highly anticipated emergence of a new, higher level of college football, one that would likely free itself from the rudderless NCAA and begin to operate autonomously, it’s really easy to see Nick Saban being the man chosen to lead a new “Super Conference.”
Nick Saban could very well become the Czar of college football.
And he’d be great at it.
Maybe even better than he was as a coach.
If Saban got involved in the formation of a new level of college – or college sponsored – football, you can bet that the incoming players would be signing contracts, not just letters of intent. There would be no more “committing” and then “de-committing.” There would be strict transferring rules, and very likely revenue sharing between programs and players that would replace the grossly unbalanced NIL payments that a small percentage of the players are pulling in today. In other words, a team’s right guard and quarterback would be much closer to being in the same tax bracket.
All these things would greatly improve the sport, even if Deion doesn’t like it. (The two of them can debate the merits after they’re done shooting their next AFLAC commercial…)
Nick Saban wasn’t ready to retire.
The lack of rules around NIL and the transfer portal pushed him out. Don’t be shocked if he comes back to the game and pushes NIL and the portal out of the sport entirely.
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