On March 12, 2024, former University of Alabama Head Football coach Nick Saban took a trip to Capitol Hill in Washington D.C..
It was not Nick Saban's first time in the nation's capital.
During his time coaching Alabama football, Saban had made winning national championships somewhat of a habit, which meant he and his team took many celebratory visits to Washington.
Never before had Nick Saban traveled to D.C. to address Congress.
His reason was important. It was on name, image, and likeness in college sports, which is the legislation by which college athletes can use their likeness to sign contracts and make an income alongside their sports.
The basic definition and purpose of NIL seems harmless enough.
Saban, however, who had coached college football before and after NIL, had come to know a different, more disturbing side of NIL.
Saban explained to Congress that NIL, while well-meaning, has created a “pay-for-play” model in college athletics that has ruined athlete development long-term.
“All these things that I believed in, for all these years, 50 years of coaching, no longer exist in college athletics.” Saban told legislators. “It was always about developing players, it was always about helping people be more successful in life.”
Essentially, “pay-for-play” means that college athletes are no longer choosing to attend and play for an institution that they believe will best develop them emotionally, athletically, and academically. They are choosing schools based off how much NIL money they will be paid to attend.
Saban hinted that the problems associated with NIL contributed to his unexpected retirement, which he announced in January.
Nick Saban's wife, Terry, played a big role in helping him lead the Alabama football program. In the Congressional hearing, Saban shared details of a discussion between him and his wife, where she said: “All they care about is how much you’re going to pay them. They don’t care about how you’re going to develop them, which is what we’ve always done, so why are we doing this?”
Saban’s retirement came as a shock to many, but not the University of Colorado, Boulder’s head football coach, Deion Sanders.
In the wake of Saban’s retirement, Sanders tweeted,
Sanders, who has been outspoken about his opinions on NIL in the media, told news outlets that NIL is not really a “Name, Image, and Likeness” system right now; it’s simply a “pay-per-view” system, where we’re enabling college athletes to function like professional athletes. “Anyways, you’ve got a problem,” he said, specifically addressing the NCAA.
NIL & the University of Tennessee
UT had remained relatively uninvolved in the nationwide news surrounding NIL.
Until January 30th, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) leaked details of an ongoing investigation into the UT athletic department to Sports Illustrated.
The news spread like wildfire through local Knoxville news organizations and national news outlets.
According to the leaked documents, the NCAA alleged the University of Tennessee breaking the NCAA name, image, and likeness regulations.
“The NCAA confirmed the investigation, but never told Tennessee what it did wrong,”
explained Caleb Jarreau, the sports editor for Tennessee’s student newspaper, the Daily Beacon. “Basically, the NCAA investigates, and they give you a paper that says, ‘hey you did these things wrong, we’re going to pursue charges,’ but the NCAA never got that far.”
Sports Illustrated reported that a specific element of the NCAA’s investigation involved a booster flying five-star quarterback Nico Iamaleava via private jet on his recruiting trip, in violation of NCAA booster laws.
After the Jeremy Pruitt recruiting scandal, which resulted in $10.4 million in fines paid to the NCAA last fall, another scandal of this magnitude would cost UT millions more in fines.
For context, UT does not have millions more to pay. Just last fall, UT had to use a bridge loan to pay out the initial part owed for the Jeremy Pruitt scandal due to financial losses from former coach payouts and COVID-19.
Two days after the initial leak, UT Head Athletic Director Danny White released a statement blasting the NCAA for their handling of the situation and for leaking to the press.
“After reviewing thousands of Tennessee coach and personnel phone records, NCAA investigators didn’t find a single NIL violation,” White wrote. “They are stating that the nebulous, contradictory NIL guidelines don’t matter and are applying old booster bylaws to collectives. If that’s the case, then 100% of the major programs in college athletics have significant violations.”
“I refuse to allow the NCAA to irrationally use Tennessee as an example for their own agenda,” he added.
"I refuse to allow the NCAA to irrationally use Tennessee as an example for their own agenda."
― Danny White, University of Tennessee Head Athletic Director on the leaked NCAA investigation
Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman echoed the sentiment in criticism of the NCAA’s unclear, contradictory memos on NIL rules which have left athletes and institutions struggling to understand the boundaries. “In short, the NCAA is failing,” she said in a statement.
Chancellor Plowman's words packed a punch.
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While there have been a variety of widespread frustrations across the nation relating to the NCAA's behavior in the last decade, no one had ever come outright to assert that, "The NCAA is failing."
“At the end of [the Jeremy Pruitt scandal last summer], the NCAA called Tennessee the example of what to do,” Caleb Jarreau, the Daily Beacon’s Sports Editor explained. “Tennessee was being investigated, fell on the sword, fired the coach, cleaned house, and helped the NCAA investigate themselves. Fast forward six months, the NCAA is saying Tennessee’s bad again.”
“So basically, Donde Plowman was saying that it doesn’t make sense how we were good in July, and now we’re bad again in December for doing stuff that other schools are doing,” Jarreau summarized.
The Tennessee attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, has since sued the NCAA on behalf of all Tennessee schools, arguing that the NCAA has violated antitrust laws by not allowing athletes to negotiate NIL contracts before they arrive on campus.
On Feb. 23, a federal judge ruled in favor of Tennessee, granting an injunction that would temporarily suspend the NCAA’s Name, Image, and Likeness rules.
While the NCAA remains unable to enforce NIL rules for the time being, this injunction does not fix the chaotic, uncontrolled nature of NIL and actually intensifies the problems.
At the start of the NIL era, no one could have fathomed the repercussions that NIL would have on athletes, schools, and college sports in less than three years since legalization.