Adapted from “Crain & Co.,” March 7, 2024.
Jake Crain: ESPN’s Chris Low published a profile on Nick Saban just yesterday, and in it, Saban basically said the quiet part out loud. The truth is, with the way college football is structured right now, after all these monumental changes, coaches have lost a lot of leverage. And when you lose leverage, you lose a lot of control — control over being able to know who’s coming back consistently, control over being able to construct a depth chart due strictly to who practices better and who has earned it. You lose a lot of your ability to cultivate long lasting program culture, which takes the result even further out of your hands.
In the interview, Nick Saban said, “So I’m saying to myself, ‘Maybe this doesn’t work anymore, that the goals and aspirations are just different and that it’s all about how much money can I make…
