Nick Saban's Retirement Will Be First Of Many Coaches If Congress Doesn't Address NIL | Tommy Tuberville
This column written by Senator Tommy Tuberville is an exclusive to OutKick.
Earlier this month, college football lost the greatest coach college sports has ever seen: Coach Nick Saban. His retirement was treated with the gravity of a funeral by Alabama fans and by football fans around the country.
Coach Saban’s achievements may never be surpassed: seven National Championships and 11 SEC Championships. I’m proud to call Coach Saban a great friend and a fierce competitor, and I’m also proud to be the only coach to beat Saban four times and one of the only coaches to have a winning record against him.
Coach Saban’s retirement is a big loss for football fans, but the worst may be to come. As Colorado’s Coach Deion Sanders put it, "The game has changed so much that it chased the GOAT away."
(Nick Saban and Tommy Tuberville, November 2023. (Photo by Michael Chang/Getty Images))
Coach Prime is right. Ever since the Supreme Court ruled that student-athletes could be paid for the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL), we have been in a brave new world for college athletics.
College Sports Are The Wild West
I support student-athletes making money, but right now there are almost no nationwide rules in place for how this should happen. At least 39 states have passed, proposed, or drafted conflicting laws on this issue, creating an unequal playing field for universities and student-athletes. For example, a school in a state with more restrictive NIL laws is going to have a hard time competing against a school in a state with more lax laws. If Congress does not act, then one state—or a handful of states—will dictate the rules to the rest of the country, which is what we’ve seen happen before.
As a result of this new situation, college sports have turned into the Wild West, with bidding wars for football players now starting with freshmen in high school. It will soon be impossible for any coach to build a team, knowing that his best players are highly incentivized to enter the transfer portal, which they are allowed to do at least once for no reason whatsoever. It is as if every player in the pros became a free agent every single year. Frankly this sends the wrong message, telling our young people to abandon their teams or avoid committing to anything bigger than yourself.
It's also going to destroy the camaraderie between our players. Right now we’ve got quarterbacks making millions of dollars being guarded by guys making zero. Those same linemen know that their quarterback might bail and enter the portal anytime someone shows up offering him another cool million.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and I have been working on this for years, and we have a solution that could stop this race to the bottom and save college sports. It’s called the Protecting Athletes, Schools, and Sports (PASS) Act. Our bill would create a single national standard for adapting to NIL in college sports. It would end pay for play and implement a national standard for all NIL deals by creating a uniform contract. It would also require universities to honor the original scholarship made to a student athlete, regardless of their NIL deal status.
Our common-sense legislation would provide stability for student-athletes by requiring a student-athlete to commit to a university for three years before becoming eligible for the transfer portal. It would also protect student-athletes by ensuring they receive health insurance for sports-related injuries for up to eight years after graduating.
Making Today's NIL Problems Worse
The PASS Act is a bill we wrote in consultation with coaches, including Coach Saban, athletic directors, and educators across the country. It’s also a product of bipartisan compromise. It’s not my dream bill and it’s not Senator Manchin’s dream bill either. It just sets out a few basic rules that we can all agree on. It’s a bill that could actually pass a divided Congress at a very divided time in our history.
Unfortunately, some other Senators have put forward more extreme proposals that could not pass, and these proposals have muddied the waters. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont want student-athletes to unionize or become university employees. It would make today’s NIL problems even worse, and there could be no faster or better way to bring college sports to an end.
College athletics is one of the last great institutions in this country. It teaches our young people priceless life lessons like discipline, team work, and commitment. But right now it is in danger. We’ve already lost the greatest coach in college history in part because of this. I dread to see what will happen next.
We can’t let this continue. And Congress shouldn’t sabotage a bipartisan, mainstream effort because of the extreme demands of those on the sidelines.