re: AJ McCarron says we have less than $20 million in NIL and other schools have double.

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Yes he does. We made him the highest paid coach in CFB from the beginning to end.

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No he doesn't. Someone, I can't remember where, did the math. The out of state tuition alone he brought in while he was coaching far outweighed what we were paying him. Just because he was the highest paid coach doesn't mean he wasn't worth more. It would be great if he was willing to donate even more but he's not obligated to. He's still on staff and contributing in other ways.

The money side of the game changed when coaches started making huge salaries. This prompted players to want to get paid and was supported by the fans. May have started with Texas A&M and progressed to the level Alabama paid when they hired Saban. This created an arms race on coaches salaries. Bryant never made a big salary, but he ended up wealthy by building relationships, which was normal business activity in the south at the time. I think Bryant Jr. gave back $25 million years ago. I believe Alabama will be behind the curve on money in the future. The rich franchises in the NFL subsidize the lower tier. It supposedly is to promote competition. Ohio State, Texas, Notre Dame and Texas A&M may have to subsidize Alabama for the same reason. Note Texas killed two conferences with their greed. The greedy college conferences have created a monster lead in the beginning by the SEC. Expanding the SEC was a mistake. Small regional conferences with a 12 team play off system would be good. Love of the game does not exist in sports now if is all about the money.

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Then don’t complain when we’re shitting the bed for years to come. If we want to be near the top at least we have to fork out cash and 25 dollar monthly memberships to yea Alabama won’t do it

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If we shite the bed because of lack of NIL, I honestly wont care. I dont think it plays out that way though. I think there will be a LOT of money paid out across CFB for subpar performance

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You may just be a fan but those of us who actually attended bama feel like we deserve better right now.

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I was there 30 years before you, The University doesn't owe me shite as far as the football program is concerned. You know why? Because, unlike you, apparently, I stopped paying for anything a while back. I'm not paying for squat.

I was up to 8 season tickets right after covid, and I let them all go. And it's a good thing, because I probably would have been purged with this new initiative. That's a whole 'nother story.

You think the university owes you something because you're foolish enough to give them your money? No one held a gun to your head.

Let's say you go into Longhorn Steakhouse, where you previously have had good meals and good service. You get a shitty meal and shitty service this time. And in spite of your complaints to the management, when you go back next week, you have another shitty meal and shitty service...only now the menu prices have gone up $10.

What are you going to do? Are you going to keep going back and having shitty meals and shitty service at ever increasing menu prices? Or are you going to spend your money elsewhere.

Large numbers of us have decided to spend our money elsewhere.

Shenanigans with tickets as described in an Al dot com story this morning … I’m not linking, got burned for that, but it’s easy to find and Bama fans should read it because it’s an eye opener … combined with what’s happening on the field might finish the job.

TL;dr … Bama canceled the season tickets of a bunch of people who they say were reselling tickets, but the school has now contracted with someone to push tickets to StubHub, etc., so the school can get a cut.

Apparently, buying faculty/staff ticket packages requires a donation to tide pride now. I'm interested to know if that is a blackhole donation or would actually benefit the employee in any way post-employment/retirement. Considering that F/S tickets are typically in the north or south end zone nosebleeds other than a basically nonexistent number of lower bowl seats, I find it hard to believe it is worth the money. Especially since the taxes are getting passed along to the buyer now as a sneaky 10% price increase.

If I was a billionaire, I would work towards revamping youth sports to give us an advantage in the long term.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Byrne.

AJ is pretty close. My family gives a lot to the university and I can tell you my observations.

When COVID happened they asked us to give our usual donation plus some extra because they were going to have to let a lot of the ticket and tide pride staff go. They gave us a spreadsheet showing literally everything, names, etc. We did so and apparently those people were saved. That to me was worth every dime, truly felt like we helped the school. Years past we were never presented something like that.

After that, we do basically the same donation plus our tickets every year and they seem to be happy. We also do X number of paid scholarships to students who deserve it. They have brought me in on some NIL deals and I’ve seen behind the curtain some. In all honesty after the Caleb Downs thing I backed off that big time. It royally pissed me off. Those donations have given us some access to facilities, coaches, etc for years. Is it worth it? Sometimes, the kids like it, you get to see what’s actual happening. Coach DeBoer to me seems to be less inclined to have the donors around even though he seems to be more chipper in person. Saban always had us around. We got invited to everything, Saban knew the game. Nate Oats was in our area during the closed scrimmage, I spoke to him briefly about everything basketball but athletics in general. He seemed to avoid his thoughts on DeBoer I thought weird at the time. Almost like he wasn’t his favorite.

Things have certainly changed. I was asked my opinion on them raising entry to the Bryant Society this year and I almost laughed out loud. I told them in a nice way if they did that, they may lose every donor we have. You have to have a level of success to do that type of thing. We don’t have it, and we just lost a 23 year streak. Thin ice is what the school is on with Donors. It’s just a fact.

The main difference in the NIL era is that you can see which kids are truly getting paid life changing money already. The most a bagman was probably ever handing out may have been $50,000 or $100,000. I'd say most backup SEC QB's are making $500,000. It takes the hunger out of the players to make it to the NFL...these kids are living better lives than 99% of the fans, so why the hell would we expect them to play balls to the wall every week.