Happy Thursday, everyone. There wasn’t much Alabama news yesterday outside of Nick Saban’s Senate testimony in support of a bill designed to “protect college sports.”
Heather Dinich of ESPN has the gist of the bill for you.
The Protect College Sports Act, written after months of negotiation between Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), would provide the NCAA with an antitrust exemption to enforce several rules that have been challenged in court in recent years. Those rules would include:
• Limiting athletes to transferring schools only one time without penalty;
• Limiting athlete eligibility to a maximum of five years;
• Prohibiting former professional athletes from playing in college;
• Prohibiting schools from poaching a coach from another school during their sport’s season (Cruz called this the “Lane Kiffin rule,” referring to LSU‘s hiring of Kiffin from Ole Miss in November.)
Saban said the bill “isn’t perfect and I’m sure many, many adjustments need to be made,” but he still supports it.
Saban also revealed some specific numbers related to Alabama’s roster cost, and what escalating salaries could mean for non-revenue sports.
Saban, who voiced his support for the bill introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, said during his testimony that “my first year we had a collective at Alabama,” it spent $2.7 million. It spent $7 million the next year, he said, then had $10 million for the roster during Saban’s final season in 2023.
Saban said the collective spent $17 million a year later and $24 million in what would have been the 2025 season. In the second year under coach Kalen DeBoer last fall, Alabama went 11-4 and lost to eventual national champions Indiana in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals.
“Now you have schools that have close to $40 million rosters,” Saban said. “If we continue to do that, we’re going to lose Olympic sports, we’re going to lose non-revenue sports, we’re going to lose scholarships, and basically what’s going to happen is you’re going to have football and basketball succeed, and we’ll have club sports for everything else with no scholarships.
The crux of the issue has always been whether the players in the sports that generate revenue should be compensated more rather than funding the rest of the sports. The pie is sufficient, we just have to determine the size of each slice.
While this bill has some logical provisions it also faces significant opposition, perhaps most notably from the SEC.
While Cruz and Cantwell, the two top-ranked lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee, support the bill, passage through the Senate is far from certain. President Donald Trump has yet to comment on the bill publicly.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, an ally of Trump’s, said he had “grave concerns” about the bill. He said his most important concern was “it does nothing about protecting, biological women from competing with men and sports” — an issue that Trump has dealt with via executive orders but that has not come up in any version of these bills.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a former college football coach at Auburn, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that “there’s going to have to be some changes” to the bill in order for him to support it.
House Republican leadership had been working toward a vote on its own college sports bill, known as the SCORE Act, before the Congressional Black Caucus announced its unanimous opposition.
This is another issue. Too many of the “haves” don’t want to be regulated. There were some light moments during the day, including this funny exchange.
Lorcan Quinn should play a key role for Alabama this season.
It turned out that Quinn was pretty good at it, finishing with first-team All-Sun Belt honors. He had such a good season with the Thundering Herd that he became one of the top kickers in the transfer portal when he opted to leave ahead of the 2026 campaign.
Quinn proved he had a strong leg, going a perfect 5-for-5 on attempts from 40 to 49 yards last season. He also went 4-for-6 from longer than 50 yards, including a career-long 55-yarder.
Last season, Alabama struggled at times in the kicking game, with Conor Talty as the primary kicker. Talty is back for another year to compete with Quinn for the starting job, but appeared to be playing behind the newcomer during the Crimson Tide’s A-Day scrimmage.
Last, former Alabama basketball player Kai Spears has a court date in his defamation suit against the New York Times.
The initial report, authored by Times reporter Billy Witz, who covered college sports for the paper at the time, stated Spears’ presence at the scene hadn’t been previously reported, and that two bullets that struck the car of star Crimson Tide forward Brandon Miller did not hit Miller or Spears. The report was sourced with information from a “person familiar with the case.”
As it would turn out, Spears was not present at the scene when the shooting occurred. He had been with his teammates earlier that night following a game against LSU, but had gone back to his dorm before the fatal incident took place. Spears was mistaken for an Alabama basketball manager, Cooper Lee. The Times corrected its story a couple of months following the initial publication.
Still wish Miller would have sued some folks.
That’s about it for now. Have a great day.
Roll Tide.
