Nick Saban publicly reacts to President Trump's college sports commission

President Donald Trump is considering the creation of a national college sports commission to look into NIL, the transfer portal, and the effects of the pending House vs. NCAA case, and Nick Saban is reportedly up for the co-chairman position to help lead it.

What does Saban know about the proposed commission? Not much, really.

“To be honest with you, I don’t really know much about this commission,” Saban said at the Regions Traditions Pro-Am event in Birmingham.

To hear the seven-time national champion describe it, there doesn’t appear to be much to the commission at this stage of its apparent development.

“I don’t really know what the commission will do. I think we know what needs to be done, I just think we need to figure out whose got the will to do it,” he said. 

“I learned one thing about coaching all these years, when you get into a subject like this, that’s very complex, it’s probably good not to talk about it off the cuff.”

Last week, it was reported that President Trump was considering the creation of a federal commission to look into the state of college sports, and that Saban was being floated as a potential co-chair of the body.

The group is projected to include collegiate sports “stakeholders”, businessmen with “deep” connections to college football, and “perhaps, even a former coach and administrator.”

If it goes ahead, the commission would investigate the general college sports landscape, including transfer portal usage, booster payments to players, athletes’ employment status, and even the composition of conferences and their media contracts.

Whatever the body will do, if it comes into existence, Saban says he’s happy to help.

“I’ll find out more about it, and if there’s something I can do to help college football be better, I’ll always be committed to that,” he said. 

“I was committed to do that as a coach, to help players be more successful in life, and I’d continue to do that same thing now.”

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