Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava definitely won't be the last player to benefit from the modern NIL era in college football.
Following Iamaleava's controversial holdout last week in which he tried to negotiate a more lucrative NIL deal with the Volunteers, the former five-star recruit is reportedly set to enter the transfer portal this spring.
Iamaleava will leave Tennessee having set a prime example of how players are taking advantage of the unregulated NIL business and valuing their contracts over everything else. It may come as a distasteful surprise to some college football fans, but not to ESPN analyst Nick Saban.
Saban predicted the messiness of the NIL era back in 2022 when he was still coaching at Alabama. Though he admitted NIL gave his players more opportunities to earn money than ever before, he added that the model wasn't sustainable and worried about giving players increased power over where they play.
"That creates a situation where you can basically buy players," Saban told the Associated Press. "You can do it in recruiting. I mean, if that's what we want college football to be, I don't know. And you can also get players to get in the transfer portal to see if they can get more someplace else than they can get at your place."
It's no secret that transfer portal activity has gone up alongside the growth of the NIL era, with Iamaleava being only the latest in a long line of disgruntled young athletes seeking greener grass elsewhere.
Saban more recently elaborated on his candid thoughts on NIL in a 2024 appearance on the Pat McAfee Show.
"Each year, it's gotten a little worse," Saban said last December. "The first year we had name, image and likeness four, five years ago, we had a $3 million [roster], and everybody was happy. Then the next year it was $7 million, then the next year it's $10 million. Then this year it's $13 million. Now they're looking at $20 million. I mean, where does it end?"
Add the NIL craze to the list of the drastic changes happening in college football in recent years, from conference realignments to transfer portal changes to playoff expansion plans. Given the drama surrounding Iamaleava's precedent-setting holdout and impending exit from Tennessee, the NCAA may want to finally sit down and talk about finding ways to better protect both schools and athletes from the pitfalls of NIL in the future.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Nick Saban’s Blunt Warning About NIL Resurfaces After Nico Iamaleava Transfer News.