Former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban has been more visible this offseason after announcing his retirement than he has been in previous off-seasons when he was leading the top program in college football. 

Saban seemingly hasn't passed up a chance to talk to reporters about his retirement and the current state of college football. 

So it shouldn't be a surprise that Saban was front and center on Tuesday at an NIL roundtable meeting in Washington DC. 

According to Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger, Saban started his comments at the roundtable meeting by suggesting that the big problem with NIL is the "pay-for-play" model that it's created. 

In his opening address at the NIL roundtable on Capitol Hill, Nick Saban says he believes that NIL is a “great concept” but the issue is booster involvement in creating a “pay for play model.”

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) March 12, 2024

Pay-for-play, of course, was a thing long before NIL was even a concept. Recruits have been receiving illegal under-the-table payments for decades. And while many of those deals are nothing more than hearsay, it's nearly impossible for anyone that's been associated with college football in the last 40 years to keep a straight face while denying that those payments happened on the regular in the pre-NIL era. 

That's not the comment from Saban, however, that was embarrassing. 

According to Dellenger, Saban said his wife came to him before he announced his retirement and told him that all the players care about now is how much money they're making. 

Nick Saban said his wife, Terry, came to him before his retirement and told him, “Why are we doing this?" She told him that the players now only care about how much money they are making.

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) March 12, 2024

Anyone who does any job — and let's be clear, playing college football is absolutely a job, regardless of how it's defined by the IRS….it requires a full-time commitment — obviously cares about how much money they're earning. And the amount of money someone earning is going to drive, to some extent, decisions on where to work/play/coach. 

Saban knows this as well as anyone. After all, he doubled his salary (from $2.3 million to $5 million) when he left LSU in late 2004 to become the Miami Dolphins' new head coach. Saban was also routinely the highest paid coach in college football, which allowed him to have a luxurious lake house (and the boat to go along with it) and a $17.5 million beach front home in Florida. Money matters. And Saban obviously cares about how much money he's earning. So why should he expect the players that allow him to live a life of luxury to approach money any differently? 

The truth is that the NIL era and the transfer portal era gave players leverage. And Saban lost almost all of the control he had over the players. The greatest college football head coach of all time wasn't able to adapt. Saban couldn't figure out how to go from a coach who would often rage on players and assistants to a coach that could treat players like professionals (maybe that's why Saban bolted from Miami and the NFL after just two seasons). 

There is no Saban without the players. There are no sellouts at stadiums that seat over 100,00 fans without the players. There are no billion dollar TV deals without the players. 

College football is a big business. And the bottom line drives almost every decision that's made (from the playoff, to conference realignment, to those big TV contracts). So why should we expect the players, who are the lifeblood of the sport, to make their decisions using different criteria than everyone else involved in the sport? 

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