Since Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) went into effect on July 1st, 2021, the college sports landscape has experienced change and confusion more dramatic than even conference realignment.
A month earlier, on June 21st, 2021, the Supreme Court obliterated the NCAA’s mafia-like hold on college athlete compensation by ruling the organization violated antitrust law.
“The NCAA is not above the law,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the time. “The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels. But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
At that moment, athletes celebrated while coaches seethed for it was a shift in the balance of power towards the former.
No longer would college athletes have to bow down to powerful programs and coaches; now athletes have more influence in determining their futures and dictating their paths by leveraging their NIL potential.
And that has infuriated many coaches, especially football coaches like the all-mighty Nick Saban.
Saban vs NIL
“That [NIL] creates a situation where you can basically buy players,” said Saban last year. “You can do it in recruiting. I mean, if that’s what we want college football to be, I don’t know. And you can also get players to get in the transfer portal to see if they can get more someplace else than they can get at your place.”
Now, we all know recruiting has always been a system of buying players. That’s exactly why big college programs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new stadiums, practice facilities and locker rooms.
But Saban took it personally, even accusing Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher and former Jackson St. head coach Deion Sanders of buying players.
Saban has vehemently attacked NIL because it’s an unregulated system that has taken the college sports industry by storm. And to be fair, he supports college athletes being paid, but he wants it more uniform instead of varying by individual states.
“If it’s going to be the same for everyone, I think that’s better than what we have now,” said Saban about NIL being regulated federally. “Because what we have now is we have some states and some schools in some states that are investing a lot more money in terms of managing their roster than others.”
Yet one of the highest-paid head coaches in all of sports attacking a system of player compensation seems hypocritical.
While Saban and others fight for Congressional regulation of NIL, it’s frustrating and disheartening to see the absence of that same energy in defending the rights of Black people and the Black athletes who make up the majority of players on their football teams.
As states like Florida and Texas continue to oppress basic human and civil rights, coaches like Saban and Fisher have said nothing in defense of the very players, and their families, friends and communities, who are most affected by new discriminatory laws and regulations.
Saban, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and a group of SEC coaches, university presidents and athletic directors met with members of Congress this past June to address their concerns over NIL. Saban and Sankey have also publically expressed their feelings on NIL, so there is no shortage of their feelings regarding the situation.
Yet there’s a great shortage of support for Black athletes and Black communities in the very states these coaches, university presidents and athletic directors represent.
Black athletes, no matter how famous or successful, cannot outrun or outjump their skin color, which makes them potential victims of the same systems and laws governments are using to oppress them.
Sadly, almost all of Tommy Tuberville’s former Black players have remained quiet about the Alabama Senator’s use of racial politics, comments about white nationalists, or impediment of military appointments. Raw Story wrote a great piece on the silence of his former athletes and it’s disheartening to see the lack of commentary from his former players at Auburn, Ole Miss, Texas Tech or Cincinnati.
Sankey and Florida head coach Billy Napier have said nothing about DeSantis’ fascist “anti-woke” laws or Florida’s new Black history curriculum.
Saban hasn’t commented on Alabama’s refusal to comply with SCOTUS’ ruling that the state must redraw its congressional district lines to include another (majority or close to it) Black district.
But come recruiting time, they’re all scouring those Black communities in search of star Black talent.
Politics as usual
Many will say keep politics out of sports, but that’s hypocritical for an entire SEC delegation just traveled to Washington D.C. to make NIL a national political issue.
In addition, this afternoon Tuberville and Senator Joe Manchin introduced a bipartisan NIL bill titled the “Protecting Athletes, Schools, and Sports (PASS) Act of 2023.”
“Student athletes should be able to take advantage of NIL promotional activities without impacting their ability to play collegiate sports,” said Tuberville in a statement. “But we need to ensure the integrity of our higher education system, remain focused on education and keep the playing field level. Our legislation with Senator Manchin will set basic rules nationwide, protect our student-athletes, and keep NIL activities from ending college sports as we know it.”
“Our bipartisan legislation strikes a balance between protecting the rights of student-athletes and maintaining the integrity of college sports,” said Manchin. “I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to consider this commonsense legislation as a way to level the playing field in college athletics.”
It’s incredible to see the bipartisan energy behind NIL regulation efforts, an energy that is embarrassingly absent when it comes to protecting civil rights and equality.
The current movement to attack and dismantle civil rights protections is a far cry from some of the positive examples we’ve witnessed in the past.
In 2015, University of Missouri coaches and players banded together to support the student-led fight against racial incidents on campus and the administration’s slow-walking in addressing the issue. Not only did it bring national attention to the campus, it forced change and the eventual resignation of the university president, Timothy M. Wolfe.
Unfortunately, we have not seen that same unity from coaches, administrations or conference commissioners in response to discriminatory laws that are being passed in some of the biggest college football-loving states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Georgia.
While the fight for human rights and the preservation of Black culture rages on, it takes a way, way, way backseat to the energy and grit exerted in the fight waged by many in college football against NIL.
Black athletes must take a unified stand and shift that energy over to what really matters now and in the future.
The rights and lives of themselves and those who look like them.
