It’s no secret that the college football landscape has changed dramatically and rapidly over the last few years, with the NIL, transfer portal and a host of other changes altering the way we watch games every Saturday.
Countless adjustments to college football have created a whole new timeline for what to expect in the near future, and on Monday night, recently retired University of Alabama head coach Nick Saban appeared on SEC Network’s Marty & McGee to discuss a variety of hot topics in the sports world, including what he hopes college football will look like in five years.
“I think the game on the field will look the same, but hopefully with revenue sharing and doing what we need to do with the players, we can find a competitive balance within the game,” Saban said.
Saban went on to offer up potential ways and solutions to achieve these hopeful goals, including the common flaws that often separate college football from the NFL and other leagues and levels.
“We’re going to come up with a system that doesn’t create advantages or disadvantages, so everybody can compete on some level playing field. If we’re going to keep the spirit of the game intact, people want to see good games. So if everybody’s playing under similar circumstances, there will be more good teams, there will be more good games and people will continue to believe in it,” Saban said.
The seven-time national champion (six at Alabama) furthered his cause by applying his ideas and beliefs to college sports other than football.
“If we can do all of that and still have that mentality of college sports, education, development, personal growth, future success in football and all sports and people, we can help them take the lessons they’ve learned in sports and be more successful in life, while not taking away the opportunities that we have right now in any of the sports,” Saban said.
“What I’m really concerned about in this is if we get into a situation where we have economic problems and we can’t support all sports, what happens to some of the non-revenue sports? Non-revenue sports are just as important as a football stadium that can hold 100,000 people. Other sports have the opportunity to create opportunities to compete and learn life lessons that will help them succeed.”
At the end of Saban’s speech, one of the show’s hosts, Marty Smith, claimed that Saban had told him a few years ago, “I’m in favor of player empowerment, but there have to be guardrails.” His opinion on the matter doesn’t appear to have changed much since then.