The effect of the Portal and NIL on college sports and college coaching is a never-ending conversation -- Dear Lord, deliver us to a time when this is not a constant conversation -- and Nick Saban added a prong to that conversation when he spoke on Capitol Hill earlier this week.
“All the things that I’ve believed in for all these years, 50 years in coaching, no longer exist in college athletics,” Saban said. “It always was about developing players, it always was about helping people be more successful in life. My wife (Terry) even said to me, we would have all the recruits over on Sunday with their parents for breakfast, and she would always meet with the mothers and talk about how she was going to help impact their sons and how they would be well taken care of."
Much of that ongoing conversation centers around whether the new paradigm where players have as much freedom and access to the financial marketplace as their coaches will "ruin" college sports, or at least render it unrecognizable to what it had been from their inception until the end of the 2010s. And if Saban felt he had to get out because of NIL and the Portal, many feel that's evidence that the new paradigm is a major blow for the Yes, the NIL and the Portal are ruining college sports argument.
If Nick-freakin'-Saban feels like he can't coach college football anymore, the argument goes, then what is college football?
Sensing that argument, Saban's counterpart stepped into the conversation.
Mike Krzyzewski appeared on the Dan Patrick Show on Thursday and, to my ear, it seemed like he did so specifically to respond to Nick Saban.
"I didn't retire because of the new environment in college sports. It would've been exciting to try to adapt to that. You have to keep adapting. This is the biggest adaptation, I think, in the history of college athletics. It's not been coordinated. You don't even know who to call into a meeting to discuss what needs to be discussed. This has been three years now, Dan," he said.
"Instead of complaining about what it is, just accept the fact that this is a new time. Just because it isn't like the old, doesn't mean it's not okay. This is what it is, and we should figure out how to do what it is in the best interest of everyone."
Krzyzewski was the Saban of his time, and Saban was the Krzyzewski of his time. Saban won seven national titles, Krzyzewski five. Four years Saban's senior, Krzyzewski landed his first head coaching position in 1975, took over Duke in 1980, and retired in 2022.
In his answer, Krzyzewski did not go on to say everything was fine and the NCAA handled NIL perfectly. He decried a void of leadership and direction, and called for transparency of payrolls between programs within college sports.
But in the above answer, he rejected the idea that because college athletics is different than it was five years ago, that it's worse than it was five years ago. I'm not saying Saban argued that himself, but plenty of people have taken Saban's words to imply that on his behalf and to further their own arguments.
"We spend a lot of time now (with) Congress so we are now protected antitrust wise. Some of that is good, I think, but is the purpose of it, if we protect it, let's go back to the old structure. See, I think we should restructure college athletics and then figure this thing out."
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.