Let’s talk NIL. If there is one thing that has drastically changed the overall outcome of the 12-bracket playoff situation this year, it has to be NIL. Did you, in your wildest dreams, think that Arizona State and Boise State would have a bye week and home games in the playoffs? Not only that, the SEC teams are nowhere this year. Georgia is the only one with a bye week and Tennessee and Texas have to clear out their first round against OSU and Clemson. And then there is Alabama. First team out this year with a 9-3 run and losses to an unranked Vandy and Oklahoma. At the crux of it all are the NIL deals. Now why do we say so?

See, the paydays and the attraction they bring have not only managed to change the outlook of different rosters, but it has also allowed teams to snag the best plays from the portal. “Being able to branch out into a lot of great partnerships, avenues to a lot of networking aspects… I think it’s been a great thing for the landscape of college football,” Bama QB Jalen Milroe points out on the latest episode of LANK. When we talk about Bama, keeping aside the playoff snub, even they got a massive pool for this entire NIL thing. The collective funding for the 2023-2024 season was around $15,995,406.

But see, here is the thing. Not many people would agree with Milroe’s stance. And once such a person is former Bama HC Nick Saban. Now, in the early days of college football, one thing was predominant: the biggest teams took the best players. That is one of the reasons why there was such a dominance over the playoffs by SEC teams like Georgia or Alabama.

That has since changed, but Saban has not changed his perspective. A few weeks back, Saban went off on the entire NIL drama while talking about the Bryce Underwood and Julian Lewis flips. “I’m not sure if the system is great for development of players, but you certainly cannot blame the players for choosing the school,” Nick Saban pointed out.

If you didn’t know, Underwood was flipped away from LSU with a staggering $10.5 million NIL offer by the Wolverines, and Lewis was flipped from USC. While for JuJu, the amount is not clear, playing for Deion Sanders does come with massive media attention, which in turn gets you those “deals”. But then again, this NIL thing ain’t changing anytime soon. This has not become the new normal for college football and it will stay. However, what Saban pointed out has some value to it.

NIL deals: The negative side

People would call Saban out for his stance but understand this: Yeah NIL helps a player take care of money issues and all that and also creates their brand, but this same thing could end up becoming a nightmare for many teams and players.

Look at the Billy Napier and Jaden Rashada scene. Rashada launched a lawsuit against the Gators’ HC, claiming that Napier had lured Jaden to his team using false promises. Along with Billy Napier, booster Hugh Hathcock was also sued by Rashada. The entire lawsuit seeks around $10 million in damages.

And then the entire scene that unfolded for UNLV back in September. Rebels QB Matthew Sluka was the first one to call it quits amidst the 2024 season and hit the portal. Sluka had mentioned that the entire dispute happened because of “unfulfilled commitments”. 

Following him, RB Michael Allen decided to leave as well. He red-shirted and sat out for the remainder of the season. A very peculiar situation, but at the crux of it is NIL. How? See, Sluka left for one specific reason: UNLV promised the QB a $100k paycheck for transferring over from Holy Cross, but guess what? The money never showed up. Allen could’ve left for the same reasons as well as he had pointed out, “Expectations for opportunities unfortunately were not met.”

This is the problem. While NIL gets you the best players, if you fail to keep your end of the bargain, it causes massive problems for both the player and the team.