The Protect College Sports Act passed a major milestone with Senate approval on Monday, and with it comes more discussion on coach and player earnings in college football. The new bill would grant the NCAA legal authority to enforce a $50 million “salary cap” for athlete compensation, with $22.5 million earmarked for player retention and $5 million reserved for women’s and Olympic sports.
While the new legislation would set a limit for what players can earn, coaches don’t face the same salary ceiling. One late-proposed amendment to the bill would have capped coaches’ salaries at $5 million per year, well below what many Power Four programs currently pay their leaders. The amendment didn’t pass, but it has sparked more discussion around the difference between player and coach payments.
Count Nick Saban among those who believe players and coaches aren’t on the same pay grade.
“These things are totally different markets,” Saban said on ESPN Tuesday. “That’s like asking me, does a student’s scholarship equal the professor’s pay? How much value does a coach create for a university?”
The six-time national-champion coach does have some ideas on how to rein in schools’ spending on coaches, though. He would like to see an end to exorbitant contract buyouts that often force schools to pay coaches for years after they depart a program.
“I think the better way to control that is contracts,” Saban said. “Rather than worry about amount of money people make, I think the thing that has been difficult is when coaches get fired, and they have these huge buyouts. And everybody says, ‘well how can the university afford to pay him that?’ I think you can figure, okay, you can’t have any more than a five-year contract or the buyout can only be so much.
Saban’s never been against players making money in college football, even though that was widely speculated to be one of the reasons he decided to retire after Alabama’s 2023 season.
He reiterated on Tuesday that his career had simply run its course and that he was ready to do something else with his time.
“We had three years of this, you know, my last three years,” Saban said. “I coached in the NFL, so I was used to managing the salary cap and that type of thing. But I think that it was just time for me, 72 years old. I think it was time to have some quality of life with family with Miss Terry (Saban), and enjoy some things we’ve never been able to do.”
Saban was among college football’s highest-paid coaches during his time in Tuscaloosa and even had various clauses in his contracts that triggered renigtiations if others were paid more than him, essentially to reset the market.
“I’m all for players making money,” Saban said. “They’re going to make a significant amount of money in this. They still have name, image, and likeness as long as it’s authentic. So there’s a lot of good things in this bill, and I think transferring multiple times does not help you graduate.
“So you still have an opportunity to transfer, but not every year, and you know there’s also a part of this that helps you retain the players on your team. Kind of the Larry Bird rule as a part of this, you know, salary cap thing.”
