Along with being the greatest college football coach of all time, Nick Saban is a wordsmith. On Wednesday morning in front of the U.S. Senate committee considering the 'Protect College Sports Act,' Saban used his power of words to differ from at least one of his employers, the University of Alabama.
Alabama and the rest of the SEC want help from the federal government. However, as carefully articulated by SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, the SEC's 16 member institutions are withholding support for the legislation.
Saban focused on the several difficult issues the act might have a chance to resolve. They are free agency, tampering, an out-of-control transfer environment, and pay for play.
SEC schools want those problems remedied as well. What the SEC and the Big Ten schools do not want is a mandate to pool media rights. While it is possible that the proposed act would not force the two conferences to participate in pooled media rights, the money issue is so fundamentally important that the other needed solutions are almost secondary.
All the debate is murky, even for Nick Saban. Not getting much attention is that giving the federal government so much control over college sports can create problems. Whatever the rules are, if the proposed legislation becomes law, they will be difficult to amend. Rapid change drives college sports. Federal legislative action moves slowly or stalls when consensus cannot be achieved.
Players as employees and collective bargaining are two areas where no consensus exists. Nick Saban did not mention those subjects in his testimony.
Nick Saban's testimony was substantive, and he admitted that neither he nor the proposed bill has all the answers. Perhaps unintentionally, Saban used a two-word phrase, 'sort of,' to say the bill "sort of enhances the enforcement of the House settlement, which to me is a start, which sort of creates a revenue share kind of a cap, and also controls some of the name, image, and likeness things that this bill tries to control."
The Reason for Nick Saban's Support
There is no doubt that Nick Saban carefully planned his testimony. So 'sort of' must not have been unintentional. It could have come from honesty. The kind of honesty that is willing to accept potentially flawed federal government legislation rather than no action.
Saban's testimony and support for the legislation make sense for those who agree that college sports are on such a dangerous downward trajectory that any attempt to save it, no matter how flawed, is better than no action. Will other SEC opinion leaders agree?
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