Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher in a prime-time mud fight
Alabama's coach says Texas A&M "bought every player on their team" while the Aggies coach says of Saban, "Go dig into his past."
They must be scripting this stuff, right?
Two of college football’s most powerful coaches go at each other this week like they’d sat down in advance and thought it all through. Is the Southeastern Conference taking a page right from professional wrestling?
The highest-paid college coach in the sport, Nick Saban, who reportedly took in a cool $9.7 million in 2021, has a problem with his long-ago former assistant Jimbo Fisher, now in charge at Texas A&M (making over $7.5 million). Saban casually mentioned at a public event how the Aggies “bought every player on their team” under the guise of the new Name, Image and Likeness landscape.
You can argue legality and morality, but let’s stick with how these men slinging mud is pure fun to witness.
“We build him up to be the czar of football,” Fisher shot back Thursday about Saban. “Go dig into his past or anybody that’s ever coached with him. You can find out anything you want to find out, what he does and how he does it. It’s despicable — it really is.”
Has to be scripted.
Fisher said Saban tried to call him to explain his thoughts. As interesting as that conversation would have been, Fisher said he didn’t pick up.
“Not going to,” Fisher said. “We’re done.”
OK, so let’s stipulate for the record that none of this is, in fact, scripted by the SEC home office, and is in no way orchestrated by these two titans of their profession. The commissioner Greg Sankey issued a statement Thursday that began: “The membership of the Southeastern Conference has established expectations for conduct and sportsmanship that were not met last night nor today.”
“We didn’t buy one player,” Saban had said. “But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to sustain that in the future because more and more people are doing it.”
Saban used the word “collective,” defining it himself as “an outside marketing agency, not tied to the university, funded by alumni not from the university, and they give this collective millions of dollars, and this marketing agency then funds it to the players.”
Sounds about right.
“The coach actually knows how much money is in the collective so he knows how much money he can promise every player,” Saban said. “That’s not what Name, Image and Likeness was supposed to be. That’s what it’s become. That’s the problem in college athletics right now. Now every player is going to say, how much money am I going to get? My philosophy is — my job is to create a platform for our players to create value for themselves and their future.”
Maybe this sounds like it has merit, unless Saban is really saying that he wants nothing to do with directly helping his players actually get their hands on that money. Not enough that they create bundles of revenue for the school and all the paid employees. Let them go hustle their own deals. They are, by the way. Top Alabama players are Rolling in more than Tide … quarterback Bryce Young is making seven figures, with a BMW deal and more from Subway and Logan’s Roadhouse, as you’d expect a Heisman Trophy winner should in this new climate.
The nuance, in Saban’s mind and probably in current NCAA rules, is that there is no quid pro quo for his players, or so he claims, while promises are being made to Aggies recruits. It’s a pretty narrow moral gap Saban is squeezing through and Fisher is suggesting even that’s a bunch of malarkey.
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There is general agreement that all this is the result of failed NCAA leadership from the very top, an unwillingness to deal with billions being thrown around while the players were supposed to play for a scholarship and the love of the game. Even Supreme Court justices came to some agreement that this antiquated stance of amateurism could not stand.
As a sidebar, it’s fascinating that Saban can’t live with the fact that his squad got the No. 2 national recruiting class … the Aggies got to No. 1 by pure thievery.
While Saban was at it, he threw some shade at a player going to Jackson State to play for Deion Sanders. There are probably plenty of college football fans who would prefer their players are paid the old fashioned way, under the table. They shouldn’t worry. The system still offers the greatest advantages to the schools with the boosters with the deepest pockets, whatever the dispersal mechanisms.
Here’s the part where Saban really might lose you … when he mentions that former Alabama players “have made $1.7 billion in the NFL since 2010.”
That kind of begs the question: What were those same men worth at Alabama? Saban suggests he is not looking to fully find out. To be clear, if Saban is right about Texas A&M, it violates current NCAA rules. Fisher seems to insinuate that Saban isn’t the best one to arbitrate those rules.
“Some people think they are God,” Fisher said. “Go dig into how God did his deal and you may find out about a lot of things you don’t want to know.”
Listening to this back-and-forth, heel vs. heel in the greatest tradition of pro wrestling, even Vince McMahon and his genius minions at WWE have to be in awe. They’d probably want to take Alabama-Texas A&M straight to pay-per-view this fall.
The questions would then be: Who should get a cut, and who gets to hold the knife?