re: Nick Saban Wants To See More Parity In College Football

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"One of the things I'd like to see us be able to work back to is everything in college football has always had parity," Saban said. "Same scholarships, same academic support, healthcare, whatever it is. I don't think we have that balance right now, which can affect the parity of college football and college athletics as a whole."

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Talk about lack of self awareness. It has been almost a decade since I really bothered to keep up, but at least around early 2010s he was oversigning every year by huge amounts, utilizing Bryant scholarships and gray shirts and anything else he could think of, kicking to the curb players who had done nothing wrong other than be less talented at football than he and his recruiters has thought they would be or had the audacity to be badly injured. Now let's talk about how he circumvented the NCAA coach rules- how many analysts did he employ, how many of those just happened to be around in offseason when players were doing "voluntary" workouts or drills and the NCAA severely limited hours named coaches could be around players? And he was able to do this because his administration and boosters were ALL IN.

People talk about Kirby changing UGA, but he knew better than anyone that what needed to change at Georgia was an administration and donor base who would be ALL IN for football, and he got his wish.

One does have to laugh a bit. Saban and all coaches like him, in their complete lack of regard for the NCAA and its attempts to maintain parity via regulation, opened the door for the student athletes to win unprecedented benefits limiting a lot of control coaches consider essential to maintaining long lasting elite performance. Not to mention they are going to burn everyone out with non-stop recruiting, even after a player has signed and matriculated at a school.

While there will still be haves and have-nots, I think rather than true dynasties, there will be a period of boom-bust cycles for the schools that want to play in the deep end. Ironically, I do wonder if this will eventually affect upper end coach salaries because even the best coaches will find it hard to maintain excellence when their best players have financial independence and can leave without spending a year in Purgatory.