Nick Saban laments singling out Texas A&M and Jackson State, remains critical of NIL application

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While admitting he was wrong to single out Texas A&M and Jackson State in comments he made Wednesday concerning the implementation of name, image and likeness, Nick said he was not.

It has gotten completely out of control and is not a sustainable model. They all want the same thing.

Jimbo Fisher of Texas A&M and Deion Sanders of Jackson State wanted to apologize for bringing their specific schools into the conversation.

I should have been more specific when I said you can buy players through name, image and likeness, and never mention any specific school. I don't have any regrets over what I said at the World Games speaking event.

He understands that he will be criticized for speaking out.

A lot of people are silent on this, and some of it has been people lumping NIL in with using NIL to pay players to go to school.

During his coaching career, Saban has continually evolved. He has never been a fan of up-tempo offenses, but retooled Alabama's offense several years ago to take advantage of the current rules on offense. He has used the transfer portal effectively over the last two years. Ohio State wide receiver Jameson Williams was a huge part of the Tide's SEC championship team last season, and Georgia Tech running back Jahmyr Gibbs was one of the stars this spring.

When asked how he would adapt to the current NIL rules, he shrugged.

I don't want to go down that road of bidding for high school players. If we go through this recruiting class this year and we lose all the players, what can you do?

There are no guardrails on this road. Most of this is not good for the players because you can do whatever you want. There are terrible statistics about how many guys graduate when they transfer. We are trying to get a lot of that.

There are three categories of schools that are taking advantage of the lack of structure surrounding NIL.

The people who are being aggressive in improving the program would be the first ones, followed by the people who don't want to do it. There are people who are trying to hold the line, but they don't want to get into bidding wars to get guys to come here.

In the last few weeks, he has clarified what he means by parity, which is that players get the same education, health care and university benefits. The same applies to NIL deals.

He said the goal at Alabama is to set up deals for all scholarship players to receive somewhere in the $20,000 to $25,000 range.

It would be better if one player got a bunch of money to come here and another didn&t, because they would feel like they were not getting anything. Everyone can earn whatever they want.

I want to give every player the same opportunity.

The concerns about the implementation of NIL are similar to those of the other teams. The NIL deals were set up to entice high school prospects to sign with certain schools.

There is no rules, no guidance, no nothing. It is not sustainable. The kids are going to suffer in the end because of the mess and train wreck. There are going to be a lot of kids that end up with no degrees and make decisions based on the wrong things.

The increasing professionalism of college football is something that is worrying the man.

It is our job to create a platform, to create value for the players future, by getting an education, developing personal habits that are going to help them be successful, and seeing if they can develop a career as a football player.

This is not a sport. We don't have a salary cap. That is what we have, right? There is no professional league that has that circumstance because none of them are stupid enough to have it.