Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher’s Public Beef Highlights Tensions over NIL

The college sports world is evolving every day, and the race to stay on top hinges on the future of NIL.

Adam Bloom | May 19th, 2022

Between Ryan Day’s contract extension, Dylan Raiola’s commitment, and the announcement that the Buckeyes’ opening week matchup with Notre Dame will be played under the lights, it has been anything but a boring few weeks for OSU football fans. Even with all the buzz around the program recently, the real talk in the college football world is the rapidly evolving and updating role of NIL in college sports. Shortly after the NCAA has announced new guidance restricting the role of boosters and their collectives in recruiting, college football fans got one of the most fiery takes in recent memory. Nick Saban, whose role as the king of college football makes anything he says newsworthy, launched a tirade against Texas A&M, as well as Deion Sanders’ and Jackson State, accusing them of violating NIL guidelines during recruiting. Both Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher and Coach Sanders shot back at Saban, with Jimbo holding nothing back in a very personal attack on Coach Saban. For nearly a year, coaches, boosters, and schools have been scrambling to keep up with and take advantage of unregulated NIL deals. After numerous scandals in a short period, the NCAA has attempted to step in and calm some of the chaos, but tensions are as high as ever.

In the 2022 recruiting cycle, Jimbo Fisher’s Texas A&M team finished with 8(!!!!) five-star recruits, and the highest ranked class of all time. Coming off an 8-5 season, and considering that Fisher had only landed 5 five-star recruits in the previous four recruiting classes, many around the college football world were skeptical about how Jimbo landed this monstrous class. Suspicions that Texas A&M used NIL deals to pay their recruits were viewed by many as likely true, but now the biggest name in college sports has weighed in on the situation. During an event in Birmingham, Coach Saban, who was defeated by Jimbo Fisher’s squad last season, commented on Texas A&M’s historic class, saying “A&M bought every player on their team…(they) made a deal for name, image, and likeness.” Saban defended his second ranked recruiting class, saying “We didn’t buy one player. 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 praised Alabama’s current model for NIL, saying that his players “created $3 million worth of opportunity for themselves by doing it the right way. And I have no problem with that, and nobody had a problem on our team with that because the guys that got the money earned it. There were only 25 guys on our team that had the opportunity to earn money.”

It would be an understatement to say that Jimbo Fisher didn’t take too kindly to Coach Saban’s comments about his recruits. Coach Fisher called a press conference to address the accusations from Saban, and he did not hold back. “It’s despicable,” said Fisher, “that we have to sit here at this level of ball and say these things to defend the people of this organization, the kids, 17-year-old kids and their families.” Fisher doubled down in defense of the legality of how he landed such a historic class, saying “you’re taking shots at 17-year-old kids and their families that they broke state laws, that we bought every player in this group. We never bought anybody. No rules were broken, nothing was done wrong.” While Jimbo says that he never violated any rules with his recruiting, it should be noted that the rules and guidelines have been subject to much debate, and Coach Fisher never said that Texas A&M didn’t utilize NIL and collectives to win over so many top recruits.

Jimbo didn’t stop at criticizing Saban’s comments about his recruiting class, but went on to personally attack Saban in a way that is mostly unheard of between coaches in the media. “We build him up to be the czar of football,” Fisher said of 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.” Calling the leader of the college football world ‘despicable’ during a press conference highlights the tensions that exist within the college sports world over the role of NIL in recruiting. Fisher went on to claim that Saban thinks he is God, and then told reporters “go dig into how ‘God’ did his deal. You may find out about a lot of things you don’t want to know.” Fisher went on to call Saban a ‘narcissist,’ and said that Saban has called him since making the comments, but that he hasn’t answered and that their relationship is “done.”

Saban’s comments about Texas A&M came in the context of a larger conversation he was having about the role of NIL in college sports, not long after the NCAA has released new and updated guidelines regarding the role of collectives, organizations made up of boosters and donors that have been accused of recruiting players on behalf of schools. Saban didn’t put the NCAA on blast for the problems created by NIL, saying that the NCAA can’t enforce their own rules because many of the deals being made aren’t technically against the law. Gene Smith, the Athletic Director at Ohio State, had a different take on the NCAA’s role in the current state of college sports. Smith, who co-chaired an NCAA group for two years to work on legislation to govern NIL in college sports, expressed frustration that the NCAA never adopted any legislation or rules in the time that they knew NIL was going to come, and instead allowed NIL to become legal without having created any regulations to govern it. Smith says this has led to college sports being in “the wild, wild west.” Smith says that, while he and others around the NCAA did see some of the problems that have developed coming, others, such as the use of collectives, came out of nowhere for those trying to develop guidelines for the new reality of college sports. Smith came out strongly in his stance that the NCAA did not step up to the plate to prepare for the impact of NIL. “There’s no question in my mind if we had passed the guardrails that we had recommended originally, “argued Smith, “we wouldn’t be where we are today. It’s not to say that we can’t correct what has happened, and hopefully we can. But in my view, we should have put those guardrails in place last year, we should have moved for enforcement to enforce those guardrails.”

The new NCAA guidelines around NIL are focused on restricting the role of collectives in the recruiting process. The new guidance “defines as a booster any third-party entity that promotes an athletics program, assists with recruiting or assists with providing benefits to recruits, enrolled student-athletes or their family members,” according to the NCAA. They also stated that this definition “could include ‘collectives’ set up to funnel name, image and likeness deals to prospective student-athletes or enrolled student-athletes who might be considering transferring.” The NCAA has stated that boosters are barred from "recruiting and/or providing benefits to prospective student-athletes.” While the NCAA has made it clear that they plan to crack down on payments to players, they have also stated that their goal is to focus on “boosters in the recruiting process and is not intended to question the eligibility of prospective and enrolled student-athletes involved in NIL deals.” While student-athletes who may have received payments or deals that the NCAA has now clarified as illegal, those players will not have to fear retribution. The schools that have been found guilty of violating these rules may or may not be subject to punishment, as the NCAA said they will focus punishment on only the most egregious violations of NIL guidelines.

If Nick Saban’s claims about Texas A&M are true, it seems likely that Coach Fisher will be facing an investigation by the NCAA on his all-time great recruiting class. Other schools around the country, such as USC, Miami, and Texas, who have all been accused of violating NIL guidelines, will likely have to prepare to face judgment as well. While some programs are likely worried about what may be found when the NCAA looks at how they’ve utilized NIL during the first year of its existence, other schools, such as Ohio State, don’t seem worried about the new guidelines. The founder of Ohio State collective The Foundation, Brian Schottenstein came out and said of the new guidelines that “for us, it’s actually really a positive thing, because we were already following all the guidelines. So now we’re going to be able to even compete more with the schools down south that haven’t been.” Schottenstein went as far as to say he is “excited” about the new opportunities and that The Foundation would no longer have any communication with recruits, while also stating that the organization has never made a deal with a recruit in the past. “We will totally stop (speaking with recruits) just because we want to continue to make sure there’s no misconception…I think when recruits see the deals that we’re doing with the current players and how much money they’re making from all the businesses throughout Central Ohio, and we have a really good business community here, I think that’ll help us attract them to come here.” The NCAA is starting to face the NIL monster head on, and attempt to put in place guardrails to prevent pay-to-play schemes. Some schools have put all their eggs in the NIL basket, and will now have to wait and see if this strategy won’t last, or if they may even face violations and sanctions as a result. Other schools, such as Ohio State and Alabama, are less concerned about the changing guidelines, and are happy to focus on recruiting using their national brands and NFL success to win over recruits. NIL is changing the state of college sports every day, and the fight to succeed in the modern era will surely involve NIL.

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