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'Our quarterback has already approached ungodly numbers, and he hasn't even played yet,' Saban said at the time, months before Young would win the Heisman Trophy. When he preceded Smart last summer as the speaker at that same Texas High School Coaches Association convention, he mentioned his best Alabama player, Bryce Young, was close to $1 million in NIL deals. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images) Getty Images Alabama speaks at the 2021 Heisman Trophy Winners press conference at the at Marriott Marquis Hotel on Decemin New York City. NEW YORK, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 11: The 2021 Heisman Trophy Winner quarterback Bryce Young from. You’ll also have growing issues within those super conferences, where member schools will feel the urge to do more to the point of insanity (and maybe illegality) to keep the elite of the elite heading to their programs instead of elsewhere. The bottom line: Since “free agency” isn’t going anywhere in college football, and since more expansion for the SEC and the Big Ten is inevitable, those super conferences will become more super while suffocating everybody else. Gifted players are rushing to programs (either out of high school or through the transfer portal) that give them the best chance to generate huge NIL deals, and that’s not the Mid-American Conference, for instance.

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Which brings us back to college football’s version of free agency. You have the SEC, which features the huge budgets of Smart’s Bulldogs and Saban’s Crimson Tide, and then you have the Big Ten, which is on the verge of a $1 billion television deal. You have two of them, with 16 members each. To worsen matters, you have super conferences.

#Kirby smart player professional#

That allows athletes to come and go as they please between member institutions.Īs Alabama football coach Nick Saban puts it, the combination of the transfer portal and NIL deals has created college football’s version of free agency without the salary caps and the luxury taxes found in the professional ranks. Nearly three years before they became the rage through state laws and NCAA regulations, the NCAA introduced something called the transfer portal. It’s not only NIL deals as horrors in college football. Just like somebody predicted 14 months ago for. “Because, I promise you, if you handed me $10K a month my freshman year of college, I probably wouldn't be where I am today. “What do you think he's doing with that? Is that actually gonna make him more successful in life? That's $120K a year,” Smart said, mostly referring to the explosion of NIL windfalls for those much less than the elite of the elite at powerhouse college football programs. 'What I can't accept is some young man getting $10,000 a month for four years or three years of college. (Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images) Getty Images celebration honoring the Georgia Bulldogs national championship victory on Januin Athens, Georgia. ATHENS, GA - JANUARY 15: Head coach Kirby Smart of the Georgia Bulldogs speaks during the.