It’s been a noisy offseason for Alabama coach Nick Saban.
He was vocal about NIL and SEC rival coach Jimbo Fisher, later apologizing for remarks directed at Fisher and Texas A&M. Now, he is speaking out about the state of college football amid the sport’s quickly developing conference realignments.
In an interview with the “Always College Football” podcast, Saban sees a shifting landscape — and it doesn’t sound like he’s too happy about it.
“I think we’re going to deal with it in a greater capacity than ever before because I think mega-conferences are probably here to stay,” he said. “Market share, market, there’s a lot of that involved in why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
The SEC has ballooned to 16 teams with the news that USC and UCLA are coming over from the Pac-12. The SEC already has 16, with more schools rumored to be interested in joining.
That has Saban less than thrilled.
“My biggest concern is competitive balance,” he said. “The NFL — which I was involved in for eight years — every rule that they have is to create competitive balance. If they could have every team go 8-8, so that at the end of every season, every team was playing their last game to get into the playoffs, they would be ecstatic. How much fan interest does that create? How much TV ratings and all of the things that go into all of these things, does that create?
Nick Saban AP“We don’t have any guardrails on what we’re doing right now. We have no restrictions on who can do what. Some people are going to be capable of doing certain things. Other people are not going to be capable. The bottom line is we’ll lose competitive balance which, everything we’ve done in college football is to maintain competitive balance … same scholarship, everybody has to play by the same rules whether it was recruiting or whatever. Right now, that’s not how it is.”
Of course, Alabama has won five national championships and has been a recruiting powerhouse. But with NIL deals now part of the equation, some top prospects are beginning to land in unexpected places. Saban infamously got into a spat with Fisher earlier this year, saying he “bought” his recruiting class.
With SEC Media days taking place next week in Atlanta, NIL and realignment are sure to continue to be a topic of conversation.
