There are three things for sure in this life: death, taxes, and white people complaining about what everyone else is allegedly getting.
Such is the case of former Alabama football coach Nick Saban, who was named co-chair of Donald Trump’s “Presidential Commission on College Sports,” as first reported by The Athletic.
Saban famously made headlines in the HBCU community in 2022 when he accused then-Jackson State coach Deion Sanders of paying Travis Hunter one million dollars to commit and play for the football program.
Saban’s aggrandizing stance that the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness movements have made college sports a lawless land is hypocritical and senseless, Boomer Babble fitting of his working relationship with Trump.
Saban and countless others, such as football coach-turned-Simple-Simon-senator Tommy Tuberville, are using gaslighting techniques, screaming about the future of college sports being in danger when plenty of these coaches, athletic directors, and administrators have pushed college sports into the danger zone.
As we know, regulations, laws and legislative measures in this country are never about equal resources or human rights; they’re a way to keep deep surveillance tabs on who the powers that be perceive as undeserving.
And that’s where HBCUs come in. If Saban had the gall to accuse Jackson State of buying players, you can surely bet that coaches, administrators and presidents at other PWIs and Power 4s will certainly gang up on HBCUs.
As if luring kids into the portal with promises of more playing time, prestige, and paper weren’t enough, they want to crush our institutions so we have nothing left. While I completely understand the concern that HBCU commissioners, university presidents, and coaches have about NIL and the portal, I caution everyone in our community to watch what Saban and Trump do.
Saban didn’t build Alabama into a national power just on good coaching and a sparkling personality (it for damn sure wasn’t that); his Michigan State tenure was overrated, he caught lightning in a bottle with the 2003 LSU Tigers and he was a failure in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins.
How did he all of a sudden become a perennial national championship coach? A tiger can’t change its stripes unless there’s some money involved.
This commission will be another way to give the one percent an unfair advantage over the 99 percent.
The 99 percent will then be forced to fight amongst each other while the Power 4 schools continue to gorge themselves on money made on the backs of young athletes.
With people like Nick Saban and Donald Trump, almost every accusation is a confession. In the case of this newfound savior complex, the confession is that Saban and his crew ruined college sports, but are accusing schools beneath them of doing the damage.
The actual damage may have just begun if these two have their way.
