The irony of Nick Saban complaining that college football has become too much of a business is hard to miss. For years, he was the highest-paid coach in the sport, on magazine covers, building a fortune while college football became a billion-dollar machine.
Mercedes dealerships, sports cars, lake houses, jet skis—the man certainly never rejected the material rewards that came with the commercialization of the game.
Saban didn’t create modern college football by himself, but he was absolutely one of the catalysts for what it became. His actions helped prove just how much money could be made from the sport.
If college football was truly about something higher than money, and he genuinely believed it was fundamentally different from the NFL, he could’ve demonstrated that principle himself—including taking less money to coach it.
You can’t spend decades benefiting from the machine and then act surprised when the machine takes over.
Nick Saban tried to warn us years ago about NIL...