Nick Saban

Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban called out the progression of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rules on Thursday.

"Each year, it's gotten a little worse," Saban said on the Pat McAfee Show (7:54 mark) "The first year we had name, image and likeness four, five years ago, we had a three million dollar [roster], and everybody was happy. Then the next year it was seven, then the next year it's 10. Then this year it's 13. Now they're looking at 20. I mean, where does it end?"

"The people who are supporting this, they really get no benefit for it, and I'm sure that there's going to be some instances in the future where those people don't want to continue to support players that aren't there," he added.

Saban previously told reporters in May 2022 that 25 Crimson Tide players earned a cumulative NIL revenue of $3 million during the prior season.

Ohio State's 2024 football roster combined to reportedly receive roughly $20 million in NIL money from collectives and brand affiliates throughout the year.

Transfer portal activity has also increased alongside the rise of NIL deals, as the NCAA will cap football rosters at 105 players moving forward.

Saban's former team has already lost 14 scholarship players to the portal so far, via ESPN's Mark Schlabach.

After the Crimson Tide weren't able to secure a spot in the College Football Playoff, Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne called on fans to support "Yea Alabama," the athletic department's NIL entity.

Alabama fans,
 
Over the past few years, there have been drastic changes in college athletics. We have been careful during this transitional period to protect our position at the top of college athletics while being mindful to listen, engage and learn from our generous…

— Greg Byrne (@Greg_Byrne) December 18, 2024

With NIL competition becoming more chaotic as schools attempt to compete for spots in the expanded CFP, Saban is wary about the future of the rules.

Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban was happy for Bill Belichick after he agreed to become North Carolina's next head coach, but he doesn't believe that the transition from the NFL to the college level will be easy.

"I'm happy for Bill," Saban said during an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show. "I think he probably wanted a new challenge and this is certainly going to be a great challenge for him. North Carolina is a great academic institution, as well as it's got plenty of athletic tradition there in basketball, football. Bill's a great coach."

"I'm happy for Bill Belichick and I think he wanted a new challenge..

This is gonna be a great challenge for him and there's a lot of athletic tradition at North Carolina..

I think he'll be able to develop players"

Coach Saban #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/pFFWSo6eLX

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) December 13, 2024

"But I think the biggest thing that will be a challenge for him is the time that you have to spend recruiting, making phone calls, talking to parents and all those types of things to get the kind of players that you need," he added.

Belichick signed a five-year contract worth $50 million to join the Tar Heels on Wednesday night, taking over after former head coach Mack Brown was fired.

Personnel decisions shouldn't be too hard for the veteran coach, as Belichick served as the de facto general manager for the New England Patriots from 2000 through 2023 and oversaw six Super Bowl victories.

He'll also be joined by Michael Lombardi, who previously served as an executive with the Patriots and has NFL general manger experience. Lombardi will own the same title on the Tar Heels.

If there's anyone who knows what it takes to lead a successful college football program, it's Saban. The seven-time national champion built the Crimson Tide into one of the country's most dominant teams throughout his tenure that included six national titles.

He's also familiar with the transition between the NFL and college, as he was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins prior to taking over at Alabama.

Saban expressed his belief that Belichick is an exceptional coach, but he also knows that his work is cut out for him as he begins his new role at North Carolina.

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban has spoken about the Crimson Tide's exclusion from the 2024 College Football Playoff.

Alabama was the first team out of the 12-team field with the committee choosing SMU for the final at-large spot. Following the news, Saban expressed his concerns on the ESPN Selection Show broadcast and warned that the result could devalue the benefits of scheduling difficult opponents during the regular season.

I think one of the things I have mentioned throughout this football season is if we don't take strength of schedule into consideration, is there any benefit to scheduling really good teams in the future? Like here at Alabama, we're supposed to play Notre Dame Ohio State Wisconsin, Florida State in the future outside the league. Those are great games for fans to see, and that's what I think we should be doing in college football is creating more inventory for great games that people are interested in. But do you enhance people wanting to do that where what's the athletic director going to do? He may go cancel all those games now knowing that the SEC is tough enough.

He then did note that he believes "the best teams are in the playoff" and that Alabama, among the other teams who just missed out on the field, had the opportunity to "control its own destiny."

CFP chairman Warde Manuel acknowledged on the broadcast that the committee had "quite a debate" over Alabama and SMU but that SMU's performance in the ACC Championship game pushed the Mustangs over the edge.

CFP chair Warde Manuel said the committee had “quite a debate” over Alabama and SMU.

"The way SMU played in that (ACC title) game, losing on a last second FG. We felt like in this case SMU had the nod above Alabama, but it’s no disrespect to Alabama’s strength of schedule."

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) December 8, 2024

Alabama finished 9-3 and did not qualify for the SEC Championship. The program had strong wins over South Carolina, LSU, Missouri and most notably a Georgia team that won the SEC Championship and earned the No. 2 seed in the field.

Alabama lost to Tennessee, who earned the No. 9 seed, but also lost to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. Both of those teams finished the season 6-6.

SMU, on the other hand, finished the regular season 11-1 and lost the ACC Championship to Clemson on a walk-off field goal. While SMU had the superior record and did reach its conference championship, the Mustangs did not defeat a ranked opponent. Both losses came to ranked opponents but the lack of a true signature win had many wondering if Alabama would steal that final spot.

The committee sided with SMU in this case, while Alabama will enter a non-playoff Bowl Game to conclude the season.

Nick Saban knows a thing or two about saying a lot of words without really saying anything, so it wasn't a surprise to hear him call out Kirby Smart and Steve Sarkisian for hiding their gameplans ahead of the SEC Championship Game.

After both coaches gave very vague answers on ESPN's College Gameday in response to Rece Davis' question about their approach to planning for a rematch with a team they played earlier in the season, Saban joked that Smart and Sarkisian were "bulls--tting us" about what's in store for the Georgia-Texas matchup.

Coach Saban called his two former coaches out 🤣🤣#CollegeGameDay pic.twitter.com/hAVZ1rXLeC

— Kirk Herbstreit (@KirkHerbstreit) December 7, 2024

Saban could see through what Smart and Sarkisian were saying because they probably learned it from him. He did explain why they were "bulls--tting" because he praised them for being "the best I've ever been around at getting a team ready to play in a big game."

Smart worked as an assistant for 10 seasons with Saban dating back to 2004 when he was a defensive backs coach at LSU. The pair were reunited in 2007 at Alabama, where Smart remained for nine seasons before being hired by Georgia in December 2015.

Sarkisian had two different stints at Alabama. He first joined Saban's staff in 2016 as an offensive assistant and interim offensive coordinator.

After two seasons with the Atlanta Falcons as their offensive coordinator, Sarkisian returned to Alabama in 2020 as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. He parlayed his success in that role into being named head coach at Texas in January 2021.

Understandably, neither Smart nor Sarkisian want to give anything away right now. There is a lot at stake for the winner of this game. In the current College Football Playoff rankings, Texas is at No. 2 and Georgia is at No. 5.

The winner, in addition to winning the SEC title, will almost certainly get a first-round bye when the final College Football Playoff field is announced on Sunday.

These two teams met in the regular season on Oct. 19 in Austin. Georgia pushed Texas around in that game en route to a 30-15 victory. The Longhorns were held to 29 rushing yards on 27 carries.

Texas will look to get revenge against Georgia when the SEC Championship Game kicks off at 4 p.m. ET from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

Now that he's no longer coaching the team, Nick Saban is apparently done lobbying on Alabama's behalf.

The retired head coach said Wednesday on The Pat McAfee Show he doesn't believe a team with three losses has a strong case to make the College Football Playoff. That includes the Crimson Tide along with Ole Miss this year.

"It's gonna be hard to reward a team with three losses..

Especially the kind of losses that Ole Miss and Alabama have had..

The only team that could have an argument to get in with three losses is Georgia if they lose in the SEC Championship" ~ Coach Saban #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/vfeXfhgg2h

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) November 27, 2024

Saban's perspective would probably be much different if he were still at Alabama. The Crimson Tide beat Georgia, shut out Missouri 34-0, and hammered LSU by 29 points. Surely that's enough to warrant a CFP berth, right?

His comments from Wednesday hit on one argument behind expanding the playoff to 12 teams.

Under a four-team format, the barrier to entry was so high that multiple teams with credible résumés were bound to miss out in a given year. Florida State even had a perfect record last season but got overlooked by the selection committee.

Now, the teams on the bubble are going to have a minimum of two, possibly three losses. Once you get this far down the rankings, the sense of injustice isn't as acute.

All Alabama had to do was beat Vanderbilt or a mediocre Oklahoma squad and it wouldn't be in this position.

The same goes for Ole Miss. If the Rebels wanted to be taken seriously as a championship contender, then they shouldn't have come up short against LSU, Florida and Kentucky.

Further playoff expansion is probably inevitable so get ready for the arguments about whether four losses should be disqualifying.

Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban has once again taken aim at the current state of college football.

During an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday, a discussion on how today's game differs from the past prompted Saban to declare that the new structure within the sport has led to more of a focus on individual success than team development.

"What we've created is a system that promotes self-indulgent behavior. In other words, 'How does this affect me?' We used to be on a team where the first thing that you thought about was, 'How does this affect the team?'" Saban said. "If you made a mistake, or whatever, it killed you because you let your teammates down. I don't know if you could blame the players for this, but I think you can blame the system to some degree because it promotes this. Everything about the system promotes this."

"What we've created is a system that promotes self indulgent behavior..

We used to be on a team where the first thing that you thought about was how does this affect the team..

I don't know if you can blame the players for this but you can blame the system because it promotes… pic.twitter.com/IyDM9iA4G0

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) November 27, 2024

Saban discussed the NIL rules that have generated monetary benefits for players and the loosened transfer rules that allow players to move from school to school as they please.

He said the overall development of these players will be stunted because they don't have the structure of the past.

"The real bottom line of it all is, everything is based on performance," he said. "So what kind of value are you creating for yourself if you're not committed to being the best player that you can be? You're not creating value yourself, you're not creating value for your future, it's gonna affect where you get drafted. All these things are anti-development, I call it, which is not a good thing for college players."

Ohio State safety Caleb Downs, who previously played at Alabama under Nick Saban, offered a story to his former head coach about the difference between playing in the Big Ten and SEC.

On Saturday's episode of College Gameday, Saban explained that Downs told him Alabama was "more well-prepared" for big games than Ohio State because the Crimson Tide were playing difficult opponents virtually every week compared to the Buckeyes schedule in the Big Ten.

Nick Saban on @CollegeGameDay: "I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Caleb Downs. We were talking about the SEC and how many hard games we had. He said we were more well-prepared for games like that [at Alabama]. When we went to Oregon [at Ohio State], we had four…

— Mike Rodak (@mikerodak) November 23, 2024

Downs began his college career at Alabama last season. He was named SEC Freshman of the Year and made the All-American second team after racking up 107 combined tackles in 14 games.

Following Saban's retirement, Downs entered the transfer portal and wound up picking Ohio State.

The Buckeyes really weren't challenged at all in their first five games this season. They beat Akron, Western Michigan, Marshall, Michigan State and Iowa by an average of 39.2 points per game.

By comparison, Alabama had already played games against ranked opponents in Texas and Mississippi in the first four weeks last season.

Ohio State's first major test of the season was on Oct. 12 against Oregon at Autzen Stadium. The Ducks held on for a 32-31 win when time expired after Ohio State quarterback Will Howard scrambled on the final play of the game.

There appeared to be some lingering effects of that loss for the Buckeyes in their next game against a struggling Nebraska squad. They needed a Quinshon Judkins touchdown catch late in the fourth quarter and two defensive stops afterward to escape with a 21-17 victory.

After another marquee win over Penn State on Nov. 2, Ohio State has returned to its dominant ways with victories over Purdue and Northwestern by a combined 69 points.

Saturday against No. 5 Indiana could be yet another major test for Ohio State, as the Big Ten rivals are both looking to solidify their spot in the College Football Playoff.

Ohio State shook off that loss to Oregon and has climbed up to No. 2 in the current College Football Playoff Top 25. Those two teams could meet in a rematch in the Big Ten Championship Game on Dec. 7.

Oregon has already clinched a berth in the conference title game. Ohio State has to win each of its final two regular-season games against Indiana and Michigan to lock up a spot.

Livvy Dunne didn't let Nick Saban forget what he said about Vanderbilt football before the Commodores upset Alabama earlier this year.

Dunne, who appeared on College GameDay with her boyfriend, Paul Skenes, called out Saban while giving her pick for the winner of Vanderbilt vs. South Carolina on Saturday.

"Someone once said Vanderbilt was the easiest place to play in the SEC," Dunne said. "Not today. I'm going Vanderbilt [over South Carolina]."

During an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show in September, Saban, who had an undefeated record against Vanderbilt during his time with Alabama, called out Dores fans.

"The only place you're going to play in the SEC that's not hard to play, Vanderbilt," Saban said. "When you play at Vanderbilt, you have more fans there than they have, and that's no disrespect to them, it's the truth."

Vanderbilt made Saban eat his words just a few weeks later when the Commodores upset Alabama in Nashville, giving the Crimson Tide their first loss of the year. It was Vandy's first win over Alabama since 1984 and its first-ever win over a top-five team.

The win over Alabama has propelled Vanderbilt to one of its best seasons in recent memories. The Commodores are 6-3 and came just shy of knocking off Texas a few weeks ago. They beat Auburn 17-7 last week and have a tough matchup against South Carolina this week.

While Vanderbilt is having an outstanding season to its standards, Alabama isn't enjoying the same success. The No. 11 Crimson Tide fell to 6-2 when they lost to Tennessee, which marked the first time they have had two losses before November since Saban's first season at the helm in 2007.

Alabama will look to keep its College Football Playoff hopes alive on Saturday when it faces No. 15 LSU in what should be a lively environment in Baton Rouge.

Nick Saban's family didn't think to look at Alabama's football schedule when arranging a wedding.

The former Alabama head coach revealed on Saturday's episode of College Gameday he had to decline an invitation to his niece's wedding because it was scheduled for the same weekend his team was playing a game.

Saban also said last year he had to turn down an invitation to the wedding of his best friend's daughter because it was scheduled on Dec. 31, one day before Alabama's matchup with Michigan in the College Football Playoff semifinal.

In defense of Saban's niece, her wedding was scheduled for Aug. 29. That isn't traditionally when you are thinking about football because the season will start for most FBS teams in September.

It's unclear what year Saban's niece got married. The most recent Crimson Tide opener closest to Aug. 29 was five years ago when they defeated Duke 42-3 in Atlanta on Aug. 31, 2019.

Would the result of that game really have changed that much if Saban handed off coaching duties to one of his assistants so he could go to the wedding? Probably not, but we will never know.

Saban did end his coaching career at Alabama with a perfect 17-0 record in season openers from 2007 to '23.

There was nothing Saban could do about the wedding of his best friend's daughter. That is just an instance where you have to send the couple well wishes and a gift.

Of course, Saban might have preferred going to the wedding if he knew Alabama was going to lose to Michigan, 27-20 in overtime, in what turned out to be the final game of his coaching career.

Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban lobbied for a "flop rule" in college football for when players are feigning in an injury in order to slow down opposing offenses.

"If you get injured, stay down, stay down, don't get up, because, you know, we can't substitute fast enough, right," he said Saturday on College GameDay (via On3's Nick Kosko). "All right. So now people are taking advantage of this rule, but I think until there's some penalty for doing it. And I know it's a very sensitive subject for an official to make a determination about, is a player injured or not, but there should be a flop rule."

Saban added that "it's pretty obvious some of these situations where guys are flopping and they're not injured." He believes taking away a timeout from the opposing team would be an effective deterrent.

It's important to draw a distinction between the types of flopping in football.

Sometimes a player will fall theatrically to the turf in order to draw a penalty flag once a play is over.

He hit the griddy after the flag 😂

FSU's TJ Ferguson received an unnecessary roughness penalty on this play. pic.twitter.com/bSjK90TwfR

— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) September 3, 2024

Then there are the instances when a player appears to be perfectly fine and then lays down while trying to sell an injury.

Ole Miss is perceived to be such a flagrant offender right now that the school released a statement Friday on "feigned injuries":

Ole Miss sent out a statement about “feigned injuries.” pic.twitter.com/n6V4l4fUgT

— David Ubben (@davidubben) October 11, 2024

As far back as 2021, CBSSports.com's Dennis Dodd wrote how flopping was seemingly an increasing trend in the sport and also difficult to curtail through administrative means.

It's not uncommon for a player to suddenly begin cramping up after a play or for the full effects of an injury to be felt once the adrenaline wears off. In those cases, it can look like a player is trying to game the system, and penalizing a team when a player is legitimately injured would make for terrible optics.

Steve Shaw, the NCAA's national coordinator of officials, also expressed his concern to Dodd that an anti-flopping rule might lead players to "push through real injuries to avoid having to sit out because of a perception of flopping."

The NCAA said in 2022 its rules committee "considered several in-game options to address this, including altering the injury timeout rule to remove the injured student-athlete for more than one play." It cited concerns about the negative consequences when deciding against instituting a rule directly tied to flopping.