Nick Saban thinks college football’s coaching carousel is spinning out of control because fans who donate NIL money believe they have a say in personnel decisions.
The former Alabama coach turned College GameDay analyst told ESPN’s Mark Schlabach this week that he’s not surprised by the recent string of high-profile firings — nine FBS schools have already made changes, including six in Power 4 conferences — because the people writing checks to NIL collectives think their money buys them influence.
“You know, I’m not [surprised] because everybody’s raising money to pay players,” Saban said. “So, the people that are giving the money think they have a voice, and they’re just like a bunch of fans. When they get frustrated and disappointed, they put pressure on the [athletic directors] to take action, and it’s the way of the world.”
Watching Nick Saban in retirement has been genuinely fascinating. Nobody questions his football acumen or would even dare to. But the more he constantly complains about NIL and the current state of college sports, the more he sounds like someone yelling at the TV because they moved his favorite show to a different time slot.
He’s not wrong that boosters have always wielded power in college athletics. What changed is that NIL turned quiet handshakes into public transactions. Donors used to quietly funnel money through athletics departments, and everyone pretended not to notice. Now they’re writing checks to collectives and expecting their voices to be heard.
When Saban complains about donors thinking they have influence because they fund NIL collectives, he’s describing how the system worked before NIL existed. Boosters always influenced coaching decisions. They just did it through back channels instead of player compensation funds. The money was always there. Now it’s just visible.
Nine schools are collectively on the hook for about $116 million in buyouts this season. Florida fired Billy Napier and owes him $21 million. Penn State fired James Franklin and owes him $49 million — the second-largest buyout in college football history, after Jimbo Fisher’s $76 million exit from Texas A&M. Sam Pittman, Mike Gundy, DeShaun Foster, and Brent Pry all got fired before Halloween.
Saban appeared on College GameDay last week and called Franklin’s firing “unfair as hell” after the Nittany Lions made the Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and College Football Playoff under his watch.
“For you to go to the Rose Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, get into the Final Four, come out being ranked No. 1 this year, an expectation that you created, by which you accomplished at Penn State,” Saban said. “And for those people not to show enough appreciation for that, and gratitude for all the hard work you did, I’m saying, it’s unfair.”
That’s a reasonable take. Franklin went 104-45 in 11-plus seasons at Penn State. Those are excellent numbers by any measure. But Saban’s critique of the donor class and their influence doesn’t square with his constant complaints about NIL, which he says creates an environment where players have too much leverage.
Saban has spent most of his retirement tour criticizing the current NIL system. He’s said it “hurt the SEC” because kids are choosing schools based on money instead of regional loyalty. He’s claimed players have “all the control” now and proposed restricting when players can transfer. He lobbied President Trump for an executive order to “reform” NIL payments. He got legitimately angry at Shane Gillis for joking about Alabama paying players before NIL existed.
The through line in all of this is that Saban doesn’t like what college football has become, which is fair. Plenty of people don’t. But his commentary increasingly reads like someone who controlled a system for decades and resents that the rules changed after he left.
Saban also told Schlabach that the current environment is “not in a good way from a developmental standpoint; a good way from a quality-of-life standpoint [for the players]. But we need to find a system that improves the quality of life of players but still focuses on the right stuff — development, getting an education, all those kinds of [things].”
That’s the part where Saban sounds like every coach who ever complained about how things used to be better. Players are making money now. They have mobility. They can transfer without sitting out a year. Those changes fundamentally altered how college football operates, and the people who thrived under the old system don’t particularly enjoy the new one.
The same forces that changed the player landscape also changed the coaching one. The carousel is spinning faster than ever, and NIL is part of the reason. But so is the expanded playoff creating higher expectations, conference realignment changing traditional power structures, and transfer portal rules making it easier to rebuild rosters quickly. Blaming impatient donors who think their NIL contributions buy influence misses that those same donors have always had influence — they just used to hide it better.
Saban is a football genius who won seven national championships and turned Alabama into a dynasty. He’s also 73 years old and retired because he didn’t want to deal with NIL, the transfer portal, and everything else that comes with modern college football. Both things can be true.
His complaints about the current system would land better if they didn’t contradict each other. College football has always been about money and power. Boosters have always had influence. Coaches have always jumped to better jobs. The only difference now is that players get paid publicly instead of under the table, and everyone can see how the sausage gets made.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.