Legendary former University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban gave testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on June 3, 2026, concerning the “Protect College Sports Act,” a new piece of legislation designed to solve issues with name, image, and likeness practices in college sports.
“If you had the biggest, baddest Ferrari that you could ever have going 150 miles per hour toward the Grand Canyon, someone needs to tap the brakes,” Saban stated during his testimony. The popular coach shared his concerns about the current NIL landscape, saying, “We’ve moved away from development to focusing on money, and not life skills.”
Saban made it clear during his time before the committee that he is not against players getting paid, but slammed the NCAA’s inability to enforce the rules it sets down. “The NCAA cannot enforce its own rules, because every time they try to enforce them, there’s a lawsuit,” he went on to say. If the proposed bill were to become law, it would cap player eligibility at five years.
According to a report from news outlet KOCO, the legislation would also limit college athletes to one transfer without penalty, stop professional athletes from playing in college, and ban schools from offering jobs to coaches at other universities during the season. Saban then shared his thoughts on how NIL practices evolved in the first place.
“Name, image and likeness has become pay for play. I said five or six years ago — a school that I’m not going to mention that didn’t do anything wrong — had a collective. A collective is an organization that raises money basically from alumni, to pay players and disguise it as marketing opportunities,” Saban explained. “When the school did that, the first school that did it, I said, is this what we want college football to become? And I was really criticized for that. But it has become that.”
Saban also said that the bill would provide protection for women’s sports and Olympic sports by requiring schools that collect media rights revenue to provide equal grant-in-aid opportunities and roster spots for all athletes. Later in June, members of Congress are expected to propose changes to the bill. The coach also spoke about how professional sports leagues have rules that govern how teams compete.
“The NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, they all have some kind of rules that govern how they compete. It creates parity,” he said during his testimony. “It creates something that gives you the opportunity to have a framework to build a fair play system in which I think is really, really important, and I think this bill does that.” He then spoke on the transfer portal system that is currently in place.
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“I think there can be legitimate circumstances where you can transfer more than once. I think if you graduate, you should be able to transfer again because you might have a fifth year where you can have more success someplace else. But unlimited transfers creates free agency. Free agency with a collective,” he explained.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video