Joel Klatt reacts to Nick Saban being co-chair on Presidential Commission for college sports

With Nick Saban set to be the co-chair of President Donald Trump’s college sports commission, Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt is thrilled. It’s the right voice to take on the issues in college football and athletics as a whole.

Yahoo Sports first reported President Trump’s plans to form a commission focused on college sports. The Athletic also added the president will be “very engaged” because of the national importance he sees in college athletics.

Trump is also reportedly considering an executive order which would create more scrutiny around NIL, according to the Wall Street Journal. That news came down after the president and Saban met ahead of the commencement address at Alabama.

“It’s going to be formed by Nick Saban, who’s expected to co-chair this commission, along with Cody Campbell. He’s the chairman of the board at Texas Tech University,” Klatt said. “He also played at Texas Tech he founded their NIL collective, the Matador Club … I’m excited for it. I’m very excited for it. I hope that the right voices are within that panel and on that commission, so that we can drive towards something that is not only sustainable for the future, but also that’s going to benefit not just the players and not just the programs.” 

The commission on college sports is expected to “deeply examine the unwieldy landscape of college sports, including the frequency of player movement in the transfer portal, the unregulated booster compensation paid to athletes, the debate of college athlete employment, the application of Title IX to school revenue-share payments and, even, conference membership makeup and conference television contracts,” according to Yahoo Sports. It is expected to be a months-long endeavor on topics Saban’s been talking about for the last couple of years as a coach and analyst at ESPN.

“I don’t want people looking out for themselves that are in positions of power in college football or college or intercollegiate athletics,” Klatt said. “What I want is for people there to be looking out for all the stakeholders, and I put you in that as a fan, and I think Nick Saban understands that he knows. He knows that we’re not going to stop paying players, but we need to limit their movement if they’re going to generate revenue and then receive revenue share, then their movement is going to be limited.

“He knows that scheduling is a problem, in particular when you’re talking about the imbalance in scheduling between some of the haves and the have nots in college football. All of that hopefully can get worked on. I think that we’re going to need federal legislation at some point, and hopefully this commission can present something that lawmakers can get behind, and we can get some fixes for our sport moving forward.”