Koll: Even Nick Saban knows MLB's money structure stinks

Alabama's head coach ripped the league without even knowing it!
Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK
Nick Saban yells at Alabama defensive back Kool-Aid McKinstry (1) after he drew a pass interference call during the College Football Playoff National Championship against Georgia. Photo credit Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK

The firestorm that was kicked off on Wednesday and Thursday in college football somehow meandered its way toward pointing out how ridiculous MLB is. Let me explain…

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If we want to go all the way back, it started three months ago when head ball coach Jimbo Fisher addressed rumors of some nefarious NIL deals at Texas A&M. While defending himself and his program he said, “the hypocrisy is a joke,” but he didn’t drop any names of any fellow SEC schools.

Well on Wednesday, Alabama’s head ball coach Nick Saban did.
“We were second in recruiting last year, A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player.”

As you could imagine, Jimbo wasn’t too pleased with those comments and he fired back in a big way on Thursday saying things like, “It’s despicable that a reputable head coach can come out and say this when he doesn’t get his way or things don’t go his way. The narcissist in him doesn’t allow those things to happen.” Fisher also said, “some people think they’re God. Go dig into how God did his deal. You may find out about a guy that — a lot of things you don’t want to know.” Oh, and just for good measure, how about, “We’ve built him up to be the czar of football. 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. And it’s despicable. It really is.”

Whew. This verbal skirmish is rife with irony, not the least of which that Saban’s quarterback Bryce Young inked an NIL deal with BMW of Tuscaloosa pretty much as soon as he could, before he had even played a down for the Tide.

Saban walked his comments back a little Thursday, saying he shouldn’t have called out A&M by name and tried to explain what he meant. His overall point is that there needs to be some guardrails on the NIL money flying around in college football. I generally agree, although I think Saban himself has long been playing this game, illegal or not.

But at one point he said, "This is not professional sports. I mean, we have free agency and no salary cap. That's basically what we have, right? There's no professional league that has that circumstance because none of them are stupid enough to have it, and that's what we have."

Ha! It seems our friend Nick has forgotten about one major sports league that IS, in fact, stupid enough to have this structure, Major League Baseball. Saban didn’t even mean to rip on the game in those comments, they just flowed naturally.

It goes to show that any intelligent person who works in sports or follows sports, knows that the money structure in MLB just isn’t right. How are you supposed to maintain any level of fairness when you have a free market of free agency, yet not all teams are working under the same freedoms and/or restrictions? Exactly Saban’s point!

So, I’m not here to have sympathy for Nick Saban.
Hats off to the guy for being the greatest college football coach of all-time, but I’m not really a party to his whining about NIL not allowing him to have the top recruiting class in the country for the umpteenth time last year. If anyone has the resources to make sure that never happens again, it’s Alabama football.

But I can’t blame him for not wanting college football to end up like Major League Baseball in its pay structure. Although, the top-heavy results in college football would dictate that it already has acted like MLB for decades, with really only 5-7 programs having a shot at a National Championship every year.

And to think…MLB just underwent a lockout this offseason, almost delayed its season again, finally signed a new CBA just in the nick of time…and they didn’t even come close to putting a salary cap in place.

I hate to say it, but I’ve given up hope on it ever happening, too. MLB is still making money hand over fist. The owners are making a boatload of money. The players can max out on those contracts. We all want competitiveness until…

…it starts to mess with our money. Then we know what ultimately wins out.

Featured Image Photo Credit: Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK