David Shaw on Bryce Young’s Big NIL Deals: “Is this what we want college football to be?”

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"My gut reaction is in multiple levels," Shaw said. "First of all, Nick Saban is smarter than any 10 of us in this room combined. And so, there's no way that that was just a throw-in. It's obvious to me — Nick wanted to plant that and make sure people knew that. It's a great way to recruit people to come to you, which the guy hasn't started a college football game and he's already signed a whole bunch of deals to make money. To me, I don't think that's what this whole thing is supposed to be about. I don't believe that that is true market value. I believe that's Alabama value. But that's not market value for an individual, which is what this is supposed to be about.

"I'm not saying it's wrong. In my mind, when I look at this, it is a combination of your personality, who you are and what you've accomplished in order to create opportunities for yourself. And that, to me, is kind of putting the cart before the horse and it's all legal — it's fine now. Nick mentioning that at the media day is a great way to kickstart your recruiting, especially if you're recruiting another high-caliber quarterback — as we all know that they are. So it wasn't accidental. Many of us around college football just shrugged our shoulders and said, 'Is this really what we want to be doing?' I wonder about the people who are engaging in high-value deals like that — because I know a lot of business people and I wonder what the return is on that investment. That's a major investment. This is a high-dollar-value investment. What are they getting back from that? Because over time, that's not a wise thing to do, business-wise, is to give a college athlete a whole bunch of money, if you're not getting anything in the immediate return.

"So as many people, like kind of chuckled when I saw that. There will be very few people around the country that will have those opportunities. And I wonder, too, after this era right now — this year where these things happen — if people will continue to do that going forward, because I still wonder, 'What do you get back from giving a student-athlete a whole bunch of money? Does that help your business?' If it does, great. But if that's not a great business model for you, then how is that sustainable? So that's part of what we all knew was going to happen. There are going to be a few of those stories over this year. My guess is there will be fewer of those stories in the following year. There will be more, in particular, those juniors and seniors that are established, that have a chance to go on to do something beyond college football — those, to me, are the ones that will have those deals. Not guys who haven't started a game yet."

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