Clay Travis reacts to Nick Saban forecasting 'serious problems' ahead for college sports
OutKick founder Clay Travis weighed in Friday on "Fox & Friends" after former Alabama coach Nick Saban sounded the alarm about the state of college sports. Saban said on "Special Report" he's concerned about the "pay-for-play" system that's developing in college football through NIL collectives.
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CLAY TRAVIS: I think what needs to happen ultimately is football players and men's basketball players – that is, revenue-producing sports athletes – need to become employees. And I think that is the end result of where we are going to go. Once they are employees, they can then engage in a collective bargaining agreement, which gets them out of antitrust. That allows all of the top programs, whether it's SEC, Big Ten in particular, to compete on an even playing field, as opposed to one school having $100 million to spend and another school having 5 million to spend. Look, what's really crazy here is all it's going to take is one billionaire saying, I love college football. I want my school to buy the best 25 players every year in the college football recruiting class, and competition goes out the window. So for people like me who love college football, for a lot of y'all out there watching right now, they need to keep what's great about college football, which is the competition, the traditions, the pomp, the circumstance, the pageantry without losing that ability to have incredible weekends. With the playoff expanding and everything else, we've got a major paradigm shift. It's time to get things fixed for the future.
Former college football head coach Nick Saban plays a tee shot on the 10th hole during the Pro-am to the WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale on February 07, 2024 in Scottsdale, Arizona. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The legendary coach suggested that the current rules around players earning money through the name, image and likeness system contributed to his decision to retire.
"All the things I believed in for all these 50 years of coaching no longer exists in college athletics," Saban said in court Tuesday.
Saban said Thursday that he foresees "serious problems" with the system moving forward and believes congressional action is needed.
"Football and basketball are going to be fine because they're revenue-producing, but all the non-revenue sports have always been funded by the revenue sports," Saban told Baier. "We want to continue to be able to do that, so we have to come up with a system that allows us to do that, and people giving all this money to collectives can give it back to the athletic department or the university in some way that would be beneficial to creating opportunities for student-athletes and helping them be successful.
"A guy like [former Bama quarterback] Bryce Young, who had several national commercials, they didn't come from a collective. They were because he created a brand for himself, which is what name, image and likeness was supposed to be.
"And I think that should still exist for all players, but not just a pay-for-play system like we have now where whoever raises the most money in their collective can pay the most for the players, which is not a level playing field. I think in any competitive venue, you want to have some guidelines that gives everyone an equal opportunity to have a chance to be successful."
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Fox News' Ryan Morik contributed to this report.
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