Jumbo Package: Saban Speaks on NIL at SEC Spring Meetings

Since nothing else is happening in the world of football, let’s dig into some of the quotes the gossip-hungry media tried to drag out of the many different coaches at the SEC Spring Meetings:

“Coach Saban was really good to me and my career, and I certainly wouldn’t be standing here without him,” Napier responded. “He hired me two different times. A lot of what we learned, we’ve applied. Certainly going forward we’ll continue to apply what we’ve learned.”

The first-year Gators coach then winked to the room of reporters.

“I’m not foolish enough to get caught commenting about that situation,” he said. “I’ll let those two gentlemen handle that. But both are very accomplished, both are competitors, both have conviction about who they are and what they do. It’s one of the reasons they’ve had success. In this profession, right, there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat, in all the different areas. I think the University of Florida right now, we’re trying to get our organization in order and certainly thankful for Coach and what he did for my career.”

Minutes after the doors of the hotel conference room swung open, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin stepped to a lectern and described what happened inside.

“I guess the best way to describe it is our group is more professional in the room than they are when they’re on camera by themselves,” Kiffin said. “[It’s like] where people might say things on text where they wouldn’t in person.”

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“The goal is not to say anything ridiculously stupid so I don’t get yelled at in this coaches’ meeting,” Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz said to begin his Tuesday morning news conference.

“You guys should be on the headphones (on the field) sometime; you would think that (what Fisher said) was Mickey Mouse. It just so happened in front of everybody. It’s just not something I’d prefer to comment on, to be honest with you.”

Essentially, the SEC made it very clear to all of the other coaches in the league that they better not say anything stupid, and for Texas A&M’s part, they wisely kept Jimbo off of the podium for this one.

Saban did come out and try to refine the point that he made a few weeks ago that blew up on him:

But I think — I guess the point, and I should have never mentioned any individual institutions, I’ve said that before — but some kind of uniform name, image and likeness standard that supports some kind of some kind of equitable national competition, I think is really, really important in college athletics and college football. We’ve always had that.”

Saban called for “some kind of transparency” in NIL deals to verify that players are performing a service in exchange for the money, which is the original purpose of the initiative.

“Believe me, I’m all for players making as much as they can make, OK,” Saban said. “But I also think we need to have some uniform, transparent way of doing that.”

You see, Nick, there’s one big problem with your statements here:

They make sense.

You think the NCAA or whoever will even try to do something that actually makes sense? Cause I surely don’t have faith they can.

If you want the full transcript of Saban’s press conference today, Charlie Potter did the hard work for you:

And here’s the full video... At the very least you get a very strong eye roll from Nick at the first question:

NIL is a big topic, and Saban has a lot to say in regards to figuring out how to manage it going forward. What are your thoughts?

That’s about all for today. Roll Tide!