Kirby Smart explains what needs to be accomplished at SEC meetings on NIL, transfer portal

As the SEC spring meetings come around the corner, NIL and the transfer portal are likely to be two of the biggest talking points. Last week on The Paul Finebaum Show, Georgia coach Kirby Smart discussed some of his ideas to change those two aspects of the game.

The conversations about NIL and the portal tend to go hand-in-hand when talking about the state of college football, especially with the evolution of NIL collectives. Many coaches have voiced their support for NIL in college football, and Smart is one of them. However, he thinks there need to be some ways to keep it in check to avoid a de facto free agency.

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“What can we do to protect our game?” Smart told Finebaum May 13. “It’s really tough because the naysayers out there think we’re trying to limit kids or take opportunities away. That’s not anybody’s intent. No coach wants to take an opportunity from his players who play a tough, physical, rugged sport. I just want to make sure that the game stays at a point where we can control it.

“And I think everybody would agree that college football is one of the greatest sports there is. It’s very pure, it’s amateur and now it’s drifting the other way. It makes it tough. We had a lot of players get an opportunity in name, image and likeness. I would just not want it to be a decision based on where I’m going to the highest bidder. If we can control that in some kind of way, it would be much better.”

The SEC meetings are coming up at the end of the month, and it’ll be interesting to see what coaches and league officials do about the current landscape with NIL and the portal.

Nick Saban: NIL is out of control, ‘not a sustainable model’

Finebaum’s interview with Smart was about a week before Alabama coach Nick Saban sounded off about the current state of NIL. During an interview with ESPN’s Chris Low on Thursday, Saban talked about potential bidding wars between programs.

Saban’s comments came one day after he accused Texas A&M and coach Jimbo Fisher of buying “every player on their team” during the 2022 recruiting cycle. He later apologized on ESPNU Radio, but also shared some ideas for how to change the system.

However, Saban also shared his concerns about where the NIL landscape is heading. He called the current state of the game “out of control” with alleged pay-to-play models coming up across the sport.

“It’s gotten completely out of control and not a sustainable model,” Saban told Low. “It’s to the point where you’ve got these attorneys/agents calling collectives and saying, ‘Pay my player a hundred thousand dollars a year,’ and then they want their piece of that. They all want a cut.”