Former Alabama coach Nick Saban testified before a Senate hearing in support of the Protect College Sports Act of 2026 on Wednesday. During his appearance before the lawmakers, he painted a dire picture of the future of college sports.
“We’ve moved away from development to focusing on money and not life skills,” Nick Saban said in his opening remarks. “So to put this in perspective, if you had the biggest, baddest Ferrari that you could ever have and it was going 150 miles an hour toward the Grand Canyon, somebody needs to tap the brakes. And I think that’s what we all need to do here.”
While admitting “student athletes should profit from name, image, and likeness as long as those things are authentic endorsements,” he questioned the legitimacy of some of the deals athletes are being given.
He also pointed out the disparity that has been created between colleges because of the current NIL system.
“The NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, they all have some kind of rules that govern how they compete. It creates parity,” he explained. “It creates something that gives you the opportunity to have a framework to build a fair play system in which I think is really really important, and I think this bill does that.
“Now in college football we have no rules. We have state laws. We have different in every state. We have litigation. The NCAA cannot enforce their own rules because every time they try to enforce the rule, there’s a lawsuit.”
Nick Saban called the current system “an arms race” where whoever spends the most wins
“But I think it’s a race to the bottom because if you don’t spend to win, you lose your fanbase, and you don’t have any revenue. So, how do you manage the other sports?” he asked.
Saban also decried the current transfer portal system, saying “multiple transfers have a negative effect.”
“I think there can be legitimate circumstances where you can transfer more than once. I think if you graduate, you should be able to transfer again because you might have a fifth year where you can have more success someplace else. But unlimited transfers creates free agency. Free agency with a collective.
“Now you’re talking about bidding war for players. And then you’ve got agents out there that are not certified uh that are enhancing players or encouraging players to get in the portal. ‘I can get you more money.’ So now we have this unbelievable number of players that get in a portal every year and we have nothing to control agents. We have nothing to control tampering.”
He added that “these kinds of things going on in college football are absolutely not what any of us signed up for relative to the educational institutions that we’ve all tried to represent.”
Nick Saban also brought up several other important points
“We have guys playing seven or eight years of college football, which is ridiculous,” he continued. “We had 50 players in the draft this year that were over 25 years old competing against 17 and 18-year-olds only because we have no structure in terms of what is eligibility.”
He then gave an example using his old school, Alabama.
“My first year, we had a collective at Alabama, it was $2.7 million,” Saban said. “Next year, $7 million. Next year, $10 million. I retired. Next year, $17 million. Next year, $24 million. Now you have schools that have close to $40 million rosters.
“So if we continue to do that, we’re going to lose Olympic sports. We’re going to lose non-revenue sports. We’re going to lose scholarships. And basically, what’s going to happen is you’re going to have football and basketball succeed. And we’ll have club sports for everything else with no scholarships. That’s horrible. I mean, we can’t let that happen.”