What Nick Saban told Congress should worry college sports

A week after introducing the Protect College Sports Act of 2026, Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) convened a high-profile panel Wednesday, June 3, on Capitol Hill to provide testimony to the proposed benefits of the act.

Seven-time college football national champion coach Nick Saban, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, University of Utah defensive lineman Lance Holtzclaw, former university president Gordon Gee and Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould are speaking on the Senate floor.

After introductory remarks from Cruz, who proclaimed “changing the law is the only way to fix the legal chaos that we’re seeing right now,” and with Cantwell adding a staggering 106 NCAA sports teams and more than 1,000 student-athlete roster spots have been eliminated since 2023, the ex-Alabama coach and current ESPN personality Saban opened remarks.

He voiced his support for the Protect College Sports Act while Saban also shared direct monetary figures from Alabama football.

“When we had our first collective, (Alabama) had $2.7 million,” he said. “Then, $7 million $10 million. After I was gone, $17 million and then $24 million.

“Now, you have schools that have close to $40 million rosters. Basically, what’s going to happen is you’ll have football and basketball succeed and club sports for everything else.”

A former NBC executive who also has a background as an agent for Creative Artists Agency, Bevacqua sounded equal support and an alarm for an impending “Super League” without dramatic change and rules regulations. 

“I think there’s going to be two inevitable outcomes: You’re going to have a Super League,” Bevacqua said. “I don’t think a Super League is good for college football, and certainly don’t think a Super League is good for college sports.

“Even the strongest universities, the healthiest universities, if you continue to have a failed House Settlement with a cap that’s not realistic and with continued motivation to move into the gray space of third-party NIL, I think we’re going to continue to see like the slide that (Senator Cantwell) put up (of decreased scholarships, roster spots and teams).

“I think that would be an incredibly sad day for this country and an unbelievably sad thing to take away from thousands of young men and women.”

A player's perspective to college sports

Utah graduate defensive end Lance Holtzclaw, who testified as part of the proceedings on Capitol Hill Wednesday, June 3, as an advocate for the Protect College Sports Act, said he would also be in support of a uniform approach for both NIL and transfer regulations. 

"I think what it does is it creates standardization and creates regulation and keeps everybody in a set standpoint of what we can and can’t do," said Holtzclaw, who began his career at the University of Washington and noted he's now participated in the Pac-12, Big Ten and Big 12 conferences. "I think it makes things a little bit easier in some circumstances. You look at in eliminating the gray area a lot of times [with an established precedent] and looking at a lot of people that don’t really have the knowledge of what they can and can’t do."

Notre Dame athletics director urges 'feet to fire'

A recurring component of Wednesday's testimonies regarding the Protect College Sports Act was addressing the preservation of Olympic and women's sports, the "non-revenue" sports, in collegiate athletics.

Bevacqua urged the Congressional measure to maintain strict protections for the "bedrock of the college athletic experience."

 "I think there does need to be real teeth in the bill where you are going to protect Olympic sports and women’s sports," Bevacqua said. "Without protecting it, I think the U.S. Olympic movement will take real steps back. And I think you need to hold our feet to the fire."

Nick Saban calls for NFL governance

While he said a prior commitment precluded him from staying throughout the entire hearing Wednesday, Saban did offer in some of his final comments the need for uniform governance in college athletics — citing the model of the NFL.

Otherwise, Saban said, college football programs no longer will be "college" football programs. 

"I think if we keep going in the direction we’re going and making these huge investments in paying players and it’s going up and up and up, I think we should change the name from student-athlete to athlete that’s a student because we’re going to have professional sports teams that are sponsored by colleges and universities," Saban said. "Because we’re going to be paying a player so much, and I really think the only way to remedy this, we have competitive conferences, competitive teams, competitors involved trying to create an advantage, in college athletics, we have no legislative branch that says this is what the rules are.

"[IF} I’m the commissioner of the NFL, and this is what you’re allowed to do. This is a salary cap, this is how we draft players, this is how we create parity, this is how we create revenue so that we can maintain a level of competition in all sports. Olympic sports and women’s sports as well. We don’t have that in college. We talk about conferences getting dismantled, that would never happen if you had somebody that was the head of all of this. Like they say back in West Virginia, it’s not about the money – it’s about how much.

"Right now, it’s all about how much money we can create and are we deploying that money to maintain what’s best for student-athletes."