Nick Saban claims NIL 'hurt the SEC a little bit' compared to Northern schools

College football coaches everywhere are still working to properly adjust to the New World Order in the day and age of revenue-sharing, NIL, and the NCAA Transfer Portal. The transformational changes to the sport in recent years has even led some like former Alabama head coach Nick Saban to retire from coaching for the safe confines of working in TV.

And, while 73-year-old Saban might not directly cite NIL for his January 2024 retirement following a historic 17-year run in Tuscaloosa, the seven-time national champion head coach believes the collapse of the NCAA’s longstanding “amateur” model has had a detrimental impact on the SEC’s dominance while helping elevate northern schools like those in the Big Ten.

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“I do think that the culture in college football right now, with name, image and likeness (NIL) and paying players money, has actually maybe hurt the SEC a little bit, and helped the schools up North,” Saban said during his weekly Friday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. “Because if you’re making your decision about money, and someone is going to pay you more to go to Ohio State or Michigan or wherever it is – and I’m not complaining about that, that’s the way it is – then these kids are going to be more willing to move.

“Kids are not growing up wanting to go to Alabama, wanting to go to Georgia, wanting to go to Florida, wanting to go to Texas. They want to go wherever to who is going to pay them the most money,” Saban continued. “So I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying that culture (of college football) has changed, which I think has made the regional advantage that the Southeastern Conference has had for years is no longer an advantage.”

The SEC’s reputation as the most dominant conference in college football has taken a hit in recent years as traditional Big Ten powers Ohio State and Michigan have won the last two College Football Playoff national championships. In fact, the Wolverines’ controversial 2023 national title snapped the SEC’s four-year run of national championships. Going back even further, beginning with Florida’s 2006 BCS national title, the SEC claimed 13 championships in 17 years.

And while the Big Ten can currently claim ownership of the No. 1 and No. 3 team in the latest AP Top 25, the SEC can stake its claim as the deepest Power Four conference with nearly half of the AP’s Top 20 teams, including five in the Top 10 led by No. 4 Ole Miss.

Despite that reality, Saban doubled-down on his criticism of today’s modern college football players, which he suggested no longer have the same passion or commitment to playing for one particular team.

“These kids are not really as passionate, maybe they’re not as hungry, because they have all this noise all the time,” Saban told McAfee. You know, ‘I’m getting in the portal at the end of the year, I’m not playing enough, what’s my role on the team?’ So what’s the commitment to the team and the commitment of the player to the team relative to what it was normally when we played?”