Nick Saban Opens Up About Donald Trump's College Sports Executive Order

Fast forward to Thursday, President Donald Trump released and signed an executive order titled “SAVING COLLEGE SPORTS" with the goal of reining in the "out-of-control" pay-for-play system that NIL has created across college athletics, but mainly in football and men's basketball.

The executive order includes items on protecting and increasing scholarships for non-revenue sports and prohibiting third-party pay-for-play by boosters.

Saban went on FOX & Friends on Thursday morning and shared his thoughts on the executive order. Here's everything Saban said about it.

What does the executive order do?

"I think President Trump's executive order takes a huge step in providing the educational model that has always been what we've tried to promote to create opportunities for players—males and females alike, revenue and non-revenue—so that they can have development as people, students, develop careers and develop professionally if that's what they choose to do.

"I think we sort of need to make a decision here relative to—do we want to have an education-based model, which I think the President made a huge step toward doing that, or do we want to have universities sponsor professional teams? I think most people would choose the former."

If big schools are going for players, do they have to have companies that want to be a part of that player's product go through a qualification?

"I think the clearinghouse is there to authenticate name, image and likeness. In other words, is your marketing value relative to what you're getting paid to do for a marketing opportunity? When you cross that line, that's where it becomes pay-for-play, so you have collectives that raise money that pay players and they really don't do a relative marketing job to earn that money.

"That's where this whole thing has kind of gotten sideways. I think this whole clearinghouse is there to sort of protect the collective, affecting competitive balance in college sports."

Are you concerned for the non-revenue sports? What's going to happen to women's sports and Title IX?

"I'm for keeping all the sports that we have—as many as we can have—but there are financial concerns relative to how many sports can you promote that don't create revenue. I think one of the things people need to understand about college sports is they say it's a business, but it's really not a business.

"It's revenue-producing. Two sports (football and men's basketball) have created revenue to have 20 other sports and I think that's why it's important that we have a system in place and I think President Trump has made the first step toward that.

"I think the SCORE Act in Congress right now would be another step in that direction. That would protect the opportunities that we've been able to provide for male and female, non-revenue sports, because I think it's everybody's goal to keep all those opportunities intact."

Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne is a big fan of the executive order and made a statement about it on Thursday night.

"The University of Alabama applauds this executive order from President Trump to help ensure a long-term, sustainable model of intercollegiate athletics," Byrne said. "We are proud of our broad-based athletics programs and strongly support future regulatory and congressional action that will preserve these opportunities for student-athletes."