Nick Saban warns of ‘thunderbolt’ that will course correct college football, athletics
The future of not just college football, but college athletics is up in the air. Now, Alabama head coach Nick Saban has shared a warning that a “thunderbolt” will course correct both college football and college athletics as a whole.
During an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, Saban explained where his fears come from, starting with traditions being lost due to conference realignment.
“I think there’s a great argument for the traditions of college football,” Nick Saban said. “College football has been great for a lot of people. It’s been great for fans, it’s been a great opportunity for many guys, not just in football but in all sports. I think I read a stat where 82% of people who won medals in the Olympics got trained in college. So, some of that is all going to change.”
More than anything else, Saban is seeing college football lose its traditions because of the changes, particularly conference realignment, within the sport.
“What we see as college football right now is being completely disassociated from the traditions of what we’ve seen in the past,” Saban continued. “We’ve had some great traditions here as all schools do in all sports, and some of those things are gonna go by the wayside because decisions are made for mega conferences. These decisions are getting made, probably, for financial reasons in terms of, on one hand, to make a better program so you can invest more in players, but on the other hand, you may be eliminating some opportunities for some other people.”
Nick Saban also emphasized that he’s concerned that these changes to the sport won’t just hurt traditions within football, but could also cost people opportunities and have a negative impact on non-revenue sports. He also attributed many of these issues to the current system’s lack of guardrails.
“I think it’s going to continue in the same direction that it’s going until something happens, I call it a ‘thunderbolt,’ where maybe people start dropping sports because the finance part can’t make sense in terms of what you can reinvest in non-revenue sports, or some players out there don’t get what they were promised and there’s lots of lawsuits and stuff,” Saban said.
“I mean, there’s going to be some kind of a thunderbolt because this is not a system that we have right now that has any guardrails and in most competitive venues there are some guardrails that sort of control what you can and can’t do, whether it’s the NFL in terms of where you pick in the draft to create parity or whatever it is. Right now, it’s a game of whoever’s willing to invest the most has the best chance to have the best team.”
Nick Saban opens up on how early signing period has changed recruiting
Following National Signing Day, Nick Saban shared how the early signing period has changed how he approaches high school recruiting.
“Our focus right now is on the game, aight? We’re trying to get ready for a game. I know we’ve got to recruit, and we’re trying to recruit and there’s a lot of stuff, there’s a lot of guys in the portal. There’s still some players out there that we’re recruiting that we think are outstanding players. We’re trying to do the best that we can in every regard from coaching our players standpoint to trying to get quality players to come here,” Saban said.
“But the whole recruiting process, when we had the early signing date years ago, we said this would be come the signing date. Well, it also just moved the recruiting calendar up, like, six months, aight? So players visit in the summer time. That’s when most guys visit. We used to have tons of guys visit in January. We’ll have very few guys visiting in January. The whole thing is kind of pushed forward. I don’t know how to answer. There’s just a lot of things happening right now, aight, that kind of take our time and focus and attention — the game’s important, recruiting’s important our team’s important. We’re trying to manage our time the best that we can to do a good job in all those areas so that we can finish.”