Scott Polacek@@ScottPolacekIncluded Columnist IVFebruary 22, 2024
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Nick Saban is finished with training, however he isn’t finished with college football.
“If my voice can produce some significant modification, I wish to assist any method I can, due to the fact that I like the gamers, and I like college football,” the retired Alabama coach informed ESPN’s Chris Low. “What we have now is not college football– not college football as we understand it. You hear someone utilize the word ‘student-athlete.’ That does not exist.”
He will have the platform to do simply that when he signs up with ESPN’s College Gameday throughout the upcoming project.
To state it is a rough time in college football would be rather the understatement.
From a macro level, this offseason has actually mainly been specified by conference adjustment to the point the Pac-12 is all however gone. Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington are going to the Big Ten, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah are going to the Big 12, and California and Staford are going to the ACC.
Somewhere else, Texas and Oklahoma are signing up with the SEC.
There is the College Football Playoff, which will broaden to 12 groups for the next 2 years however may be even bigger in the near future. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Wednesday that the CFP management committee went over possibly increasing to 14 groups as quickly as 2026 throughout conferences.
Include name, image and similarity chances for gamers and the ever-expanding usage of the transfer website, and today’s college football looks absolutely nothing like the variation of the sport that Saban controlled for so long as a seven-time nationwide champ head coach.
He worried he is encouraging of gamers having the chance to generate income however revealed interest in the present system.
“But what you have now isn’t call, image and similarity. A cumulative has absolutely nothing to do with name, image and similarity,” Saban stated.
“Listen, I’m for the gamers,” he continued. “It’s not that I’m not for the gamers. I wish to see the gamers have a fantastic lifestyle and have the ability to produce worth on their own. We’ve gone to no one talking about education, no one talking about producing worth for their future, to talking just about how much cash can I make while I’m in college.
“I believe the effect of this might boil down the roadway when a few of these guys get 28 and 29 years of ages that perhaps they didn’t prepare themselves for when they can’t play football any longer, which is what you ought to do when you go to college.”
While Saban will no longer be on the sideline for the Crimson Tide, it looks like he will stay a popular voice for the sport as it tries to browse an unpredictable future.
