Coach Saban Lashes Out at Recruiting Competition

Until recently, the question of "should college athletes be paid" was answered by the fact that across all sports and universities, student-athletes were considered amateurs and therefore prohibited from receiving monetary compensation for their athletic accomplishments. The concept of paying college athletes, however, has been anything but a clear-cut issue--unlike placing a bet on your favorite college team at Ohio Online Casinos like BetMGM & DraftKings.

Athletes have demanded compensation through various means and coaches have been caught trying to incentivize players to come to their school through elaborate gifts or sneaky offerings of cash, but the debate about paying college athletes has not made much impact. While the NCAA and individual universities have profited off of the name, image, and likeness of their student-athletes for decades, it wasn't until recently that the athletes themselves were allowed to profit off of themselves.

Alabama coach Nick Saban set the college football world abuzz Wednesday night when he told a gathering of business leaders in the state that Texas A&M assembled the top-ranked recruiting class in the country because it "bought every player" with name, image, and likeness deals. Detesting the influence of money in recruiting, he also said NIL was being used unfairly. At Alabama, he said of its No. 2-ranked class, "We didn't buy one player, all right?"

Jimbo Fisher was furious, obviously taking Saban's comments personally. And while he didn't name Saban, Fisher's response was similarly personal. "It's despicable that a reputable head coach can come out and say this when he doesn't get his way," Fisher said. "The narcissist in him doesn't allow those things to happen. It's ridiculous when he's not on top."

Saban told the press on Thursday that he reached out to Fisher and Sanders wanting to apologize for mentioning their specific schools and for any suggestion that they were cheating to get players. But Saban didn't back down from his stance that paying high school players under the guise of NIL to attend a certain university was bad for college sports.