This is so, so spot on:
The man who intentionally revealed last summer at the Texas High School Coaches Association convention that his quarterback’s NIL deals were approaching “ungodly numbers”, is concerned that the combination of NIL and the transfer portal has created a situation where “you can basically buy players” as a recruiting tool.
And the man who is set to make an average of about $9.4 million over the next seven years coaching football justifies that by saying “it’s a free market we live in, in anything.” But then says he is against players being paid.
We all know college athletics is in desperate need of leadership – of which it has had none from the NCAA – and guardrails as we navigate the waters of the long-overdue world of player empowerment. And Alabama’s Nick Saban (the coach in Example No. 1) and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney (the coach in Example No. 2) occasionally make valid points.
But some of their most recent rants continue to reek of hypocrisy.
‘Ya think?
… But his outwardly complaining about it being used in recruiting … he didn’t mind it last summer when he made sure every coach in the room at the Texas High School Coaches Association convention was aware that Bryce Young, who had yet to start a game at Alabama, had NIL deals closing in on $1 million. The message: If you have a stud quarterback out there, Alabama is where he can get rich.
And Saban has benefited as much as anyone from the portal, which is fine. But for someone who acts so offended, he is making sure everyone knows it.
“Last year on our team, our guys probably made as much or more than anybody in the country,” he told the AP. Are you listening Johnny Five Star defensive lineman who might be thinking of transferring?
All the Sabans and Dabos of the coaching world are worried about is a perceived loss of control over players’ futures. The rest is commentary. Hypocritical commentary.
Get The Picture 
Nick and Dabo are finding out that others can play the game the Red Elephant Club and IPTAY have done for years. Say it ain’t so?
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That’s really what it is for those 2…encroachment on their perceived exclusivity
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Nick and Dabo?
Fuckn losers.
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Does that make satan the goat Fuckn loser…asking for dabo, the mayor of hypocritical Fuckn loserville…GO DAWGS!
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Um coach, what about the player currently on scholly that would need to be dumped to make room for a newbie from the portal? At least you still have control of that.
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”My program is as pure as the driven snow—it’s all those other programs that are corrupt.” A common refrain in college football for years, and it ain’t gonna change because of NIL. Some traditions never die.
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IMO, the only “spot on” in that article is Dabo’s comment about Delta Airlines.
And if you don’t think that the benefits scholarship college athletes have been receiving–especially in the past several years of skyrocketing college tuitions–is far greater than the benefits that baggage handlers at airports receive, I guess I understand why you favor NIL, unhindered transfers, the Wild Wild West.
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Tell me you don’t understand how supply and demand works without saying you don’t understand how supply and demand works.
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OK, I’ll bite, how does supply and demand work? (I’ll admit, I only got my Bachelor’s from UGA, and I only ran my small business for 32 years.)
Moreover, what exactly does it have to do with this thread? (Don’t tell me I’m missing your point again.)
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How many folks are out there with Jordan Davis’ attributes? And how many folks with baggage handlers’?
College athletes should be paid more, because of scarcity. They haven’t been because of collusion.
This isn’t rocket science.
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According to the NCAA website, “Divisions I and II schools provide more than $3.6 billion in athletics scholarships annually to more than 180,000 student-athletes.”
How many baggage handlers out there? Probably not 180,000. But whatever the number is, somewhere out there’s the Jordan Davis of baggage handlers. And I’ll bet, because of supply and demand, that he/she will soon be making a whole lot more money, even if he/she decides to continue his/her career in something other than baggage handling.
Also, of course, the real Jordan Davis didn’t have to play college football. Why should he, if he’s the victim of “collusion”? He could’ve sat out, hired personal trainers, worked out on his own with an eye toward his NFL career. Worked out OK for Ja’Marr Chase.
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This is rehashed and tiresome.
First off, you can’t spend your scholarship at Kroger. The scholarship isn’t a fixed, paid cost by a school.
And collusion in quote marks? Tell that to the federal courts.
I didn’t ask you how many baggage handlers are out there. I asked you how big the pool of folks who could be baggage handlers is. It’s a considerably larger number than the pool of those who could be NFL first round draft picks. If you believe “the Jordan Davis of baggage handlers” is a meaningful rebuttal to that, I think we’re done here.
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He’s telling you that there are a hell of a lot more folks qualified to handle baggage than be first round draft picks in the NFL….D, JD.
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He will most certainly inform you that the point is being missed. The Senator will state that the free market determines the value of each player, which would be accurate. The problem is that the market is not completely free. This was pointed out in a post yesterday with tweets from David Hale. What we are experiencing is a market that is being manipulated by collectives and boosters. In short, the Wild, Wild West you refer to. It is not a pleasant sight, and there is no clear fix to this problem as there is zero oversight within college football today. Several pointed to the unintended consequences of NIL, some posters on this very site I might add, yet into the great unknown we must travel for the benefit and glory of the free market others cried. Now we have kids leaving high school a year early to capitalize on their “NIL”. We have collectives allegedly paying north of 25M dollars for the best recruiting class ever. We have reports of a HS QB receiving 8M bucks to sign with an SEC school. Is this the free market at work, or is this something else? Either way, I don’t like what we are seeing.
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NIL inducements take less effort than hitting the trail, building relationships and convincing young men to come to your school. Facilities, amenities and location become window dressings to cold hard cash.
NIL has become the great equalizer. Figure it out, Kirby, or the recruiting machine you have built will be for naught.
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NIL is not an equalizer. It just redirects the money and allows inducements to be handed out in the light of day. Schools with insane boosters still have a massive advantage over everyone else, and coaches who work harder at recruiting and have more personal charisma than others will still win recruiting battles.
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I would counter that by saying it does, at least in the short term. TAMU has always had insane boosters and we both know Jimbo oozes personal charisma, so why did they wait until this year to have an all time historic recruiting class? Why are a bunch of schools scrambling to put together a “NIL collective”?
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A&M finished 4th, 6th and 8th nationally the prior three years. Did NIL push them up a bit in the last class? Maybe, though it’s certainly possible they’d have put the class together without it. And outside of A&M, everyone else finished exactly where you’d expect with or without NIL.
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Pointing at Saban and Dabo and screaming “hypocrite” continues to remain undefeated as a mechanism to avoid addressing their substantive criticisms….
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If the schools had addressed your substantive concerns two decades ago, you might not be having a sad right now.
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Guess I’ll just sit here with Saban and Dabo and continue screaming “its not too late to turn back!” into the void of college administrators…. No doubt that pretty soon we’ll just be like the Japanese soldiers still holding out on some small island in the Pacific in the ’50s….
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It’s not going back, but schools could still make an effort to create a less chaotic structure.
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Wouldn’t you agree that is what Saban and Dabo are at least trying to get people focused on as they continue to make these comments? Sure they may be self-serving to a large extent, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong or should be summarily dismissed.
Do you think Saban – who doesn’t have many seasons left to bank $9.4MM a year – keeps making these comments because he thinks things are going to change so suddenly in the very immediate future while he can still benefit from them? I don’t, and so I take him (to a large, but not totally) as sincere in having – to a good extent – the intermediate and long-term health of the sport in mind.
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“Wrong” is a judgment call, so I won’t go there, but summarily dismissed? Sure, because nobody in a position of authority when it comes to college sports is going to take him up on what he wants.
There are plenty of folks who don’t like how NIL and the transfer portal have affected college football. So what? A bunch of them probably thought Nick was right when he was moaning about what HUNH was doing to college football. How’d that work out?
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While I tend to agree, I am not sure what a less chaotic structure would look like without the college game becoming professional in nature. Is that the less chaotic approach?
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The four highest paid UGA employees in the 2020-2021 fiscal year were athletic coaches. Three are football coaches. Eighteen of the top 20 higest salaries consist of 12 football coaches, two athletic office officials, a women’s BB coach, a track coach, a swimming coach and a men’s basketball coach.
UGA athletics has been professional in nature for years, with none of the cash going to the only folks we want to watch perform. THAT is a chaotic structure in my book.
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I am not sure I entirely follow your thought train so please correct me where I am wrong. It sounds as if you support pay for play and without it, it is a chaotic structure?
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79Dawg, got to like it just for the Jap holdout reference.
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Me and Saban don’t leave the cave – we make Dabo run out and bring in the pineapples and coconuts we survive on…. Every few days, he runs back in empty handed saying he got scared because he saw a big plane, not one of ours, flying overhead….
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LMAO!
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Watch out for empty coke bottles.
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Ay yi yi!
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Kirby’s on the mutha,
and
UGA IS THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONS IN FOOTBALL!!
(despite the nikki gumps and the dumbos from that third rate cow college in upstate South Carolina)
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Coaches need to look into the mirror on this before they speak, the more they open their mouth the more they sound like politicians, good for me but not thee.
I have no problem with a coach making $9.4 mil, just like I have no problem with a kid making $1 or 8 mil with nothing real to prove how good they really are. Not sure why the coaches do either, unless they are scared of the unknown and not sure how to handle the extra work it could cause them.
I have no problem with players leaving for greener pastures just like they have been kicked to the curb in the past. Nicky boy should really have no reason to bitch about this at all, if not for transfers he would not have had the chance to blame the loss to UGA in the title game.
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IMO, we may just be a few short years away from a NIL collective of star college players all deciding to transfer together to go make Notre Dame great again, or Miami, or Whatsamatta U. Get ready.
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You mean like the Fab Five that went to Michigan?
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No, and I am curious how you can make that comparison.
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I see pure hypocrisy in saying it’s a free market but then being flatly against NIL.
But you can’t expect coaches to refuse to engage with or take advantage of NIL (the pay for play aspect of it) or the portal just because they don’t like certain ways either of them has changed the sport. Same as with the ole “is this what we want football to be?” comment regarding the spread. That isn’t necessarily hypocrisy – just a complaint about a working environment.
It’s important to draw a distinction between the coaches who just think players should be content with a scholarship and a meal plan and nothing else, and those who are glad players can market themselves but abhor pay for play and the aspect of financially luring players away from each other’s rosters…. But are willing to do it while it’s the current lay of the land on which they do battle. .
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