The Setup

Nick Saban testified before the Senate earlier this year urging Congress to pass legislation regulating Name, Image, and Likeness deals in college sports. Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua has made similar noise, warning that NIL is destabilizing college football as we know it.

Both men are selective about what they're upset about.

What NIL Actually Is

NIL — Name, Image, and Likeness — refers to the ability of college athletes to profit from their own identity. A quarterback can sign an endorsement deal. A gymnast can monetize her social media following. A point guard can get paid for a local car dealership appearance.

This was illegal until 2021.

For nearly a century, the NCAA ran a cartel. Universities pocketed billions in TV revenue. Coaches signed contracts worth $8 to $12 million a year. Athletic departments built $100 million facilities. And the athletes — the actual product — got a scholarship and a meal plan.

Fox News reported Saban's Senate appearance and noted that coaching contracts were conspicuously glossed over in his testimony.

The Saban Problem

Nick Saban is one of the greatest football coaches who ever lived.

But Saban retired from Alabama in January 2024 after earning approximately $11.7 million in his final season as head coach, according to reporting on public university salary disclosures. He built a dynasty on recruiting five-star athletes who generated hundreds of millions in revenue for the University of Alabama.

Now he's in Washington arguing that 20-year-old athletes getting paid is the problem.

Saban's concern — shared by Bevacqua — is that NIL has created a chaotic marketplace where the richest boosters funnel money through collectives to essentially buy rosters. It's a real problem created by the same power structure Saban benefited from for decades.

Bevacqua's Glass House

Notre Dame is one of the wealthiest athletic programs in the country. The Fighting Irish have their own TV deal with NBC, a brand worth hundreds of millions, and a football program that generates enormous revenue independent of the NCAA.

Bevacqua warning about NIL destabilizing college sports is the equivalent of a casino owner complaining that someone installed slot machines in a competitor's lobby. He helped build the system. The system is now doing what systems do when the rules change — it's adapting messily.

What the Critics Are Ignoring

The anti-NIL crowd consistently refuses to address several points:

First, the transfer portal chaos everyone is screaming about is a direct result of decades of NCAA rules that prevented athlete mobility while giving coaches complete freedom to leave for better offers mid-season. Coaches bailed on players constantly. Now players can bail on programs. Suddenly it's a crisis.

Second, the "corruption" of NIL collectives — where wealthy boosters pump money into player recruitment — is not new behavior. Boosters have been illegally paying players for as long as college sports have existed. At least now it's out in the open.

Third, the idea that NIL is destroying the "purity" of college sports ignores history. College football became a billion-dollar industry a long time ago. The only thing that was pure was the exploitation.

What Congress Should Actually Do

Saban is right that there needs to be a federal framework. Fifty states with fifty different NIL rules creates a genuine competitive imbalance and legal nightmare.

But any federal legislation that caps athlete compensation while leaving coach salaries and university revenue streams untouched is not a fix. It's a cartel restoration project dressed up as reform.

If Congress is serious, the legislation needs to address:

• Standardized disclosure rules for NIL collectives so boosters can't operate shadow recruiting operations
• Revenue sharing — athletes getting a direct cut of the TV money their labor generates
• Athlete employment protections — health coverage, academic support, exit rights
• Coaching contract accountability — if you're arguing athletes make too much, the $10M coaching contract is on the table too

Missing Context

Most mainstream coverage of this debate frames it as "greedy athletes destabilizing tradition." That framing is lazy.

The athletes are not the problem. A 19-year-old linebacker signing a $500,000 NIL deal is not the reason college football faces structural challenges. The reason college football faces structural challenges is 30 years of escalating TV contracts, conference realignment driven by money, and an NCAA that governed through contradictions and selective enforcement.

Fox News covered Saban's Senate push sympathetically but glossed over the coaching contract angle. That omission is significant when evaluating arguments about athlete compensation without addressing coach compensation in the same conversation.

Conclusion

NIL has real problems that deserve real solutions. A federal framework makes sense. But listening to Nick Saban and Pete Bevacqua lecture Congress about athletes making too much money is like listening to oil executives testify about energy prices.

They're not wrong that there's a mess. They're just not the right people to clean it up — and they helped make it.

The athletes spent decades generating wealth for everyone around them. That they're finally getting a piece of it is not a scandal. It's overdue.