Alabama’s Nick Saban rants about schools ‘buying’ players. Jimbo Fisher fires back.
Update: Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher held a press conference to address Saban’s allegations. Fisher was not happy with his former boss. The two worked together when Saban was the head coach at LSU.
[Fisher rips Saban: ‘Some people think they’re God’]
Nick Saban has it all stirred up Thursday morning.
At an appearance Wednesday night to promote the upcoming World Games in Birmingham, the Alabama football coach went on a rant about NIL that included accusing Texas A&M of buying its No. 1-ranked recruiting class.
“You read about it, you know who they are,” said Saban, according to Mike Rodak of AL.com. “We were second in recruiting last year. A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player. But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to sustain that in the future, because more and more people are doing it. It’s tough.”
[Rivals 2022 college football team recruiting rankings]
Saban also alleged that Jackson State, under coach Deion Sanders, bought a top Division I prospect.
“Jackson State paid a guy a million dollars last year that was a really good Division I player to come to school. It was in the paper. They bragged about it! Nobody did anything about it,” the 70-year-old Saban said.
Sanders responded on Twitter by saying, “You best believe I will address that LIE Coach SABAN told tomorrow,” tweeted Sanders. “I was & awakened by my son @ShedeurSanders that sent me the article stating that WE PAYED @TravisHunterJr a Million to play at @GoJSUTigersFB ! We as a PEOPLE don’t have to pay our PEOPLE to play with our PEOPLE.”
[Nick Saban sounds scared on NIL rant]
The NCAA issued guidelines last week that prohibits boosters from “buying” players for schools. It’s not clear how that will work considering, as it stands now, each state has its own laws regarding name, image and likeness.
Kentucky Coach Mark Stoops discussed NIL during the Concordia Summit in Lexington last month. Stoops said he would like to see a federal law that brought uniformity to the rules.
During UK’s spring practice, Stoops talked about the “collectives” being put together by schools.
“I think we all are a bit concerned about the ‘Let’s just put a collective together with $10 million and buy recruits, let’s buy 25 free agents a year,’” Stoops told reporters. “Is that really what we got into this for? Or did we get into it to support the Chris Rodriguezes and other guys that have done so much for us and work really hard? You know what I mean?”
Former Green Bay Packers executive Andrew Brandt, who now teaches sports law at Villanova, had a different take on Saban’s comments. Brandt tweeted, “Saban made his comments speaking to local business leaders. Translation: “You see what these other places are doing? You guys got to step it up!”
This story was originally published May 19, 2022 at 9:02 AM.
