"Lot of them that want to ask about NIL": Georgia HC Kirby Smart echoes retired Alabama HC's claims from Capitol Hill roundtable

Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart talked about the questions recruits ask him at the school's pro day on Wednesday.

“There's a lot of them that want to ask about NIL. They don’t want to ask about what your NFL players have done. I think it’s much more important how you develop players than how much NIL you can give them.”

Smart's comments about the shifting priorities of recruits in the NIL era reflect a growing trend in college football and college sports overall.

Ever since the NIL passed in 2021, college athletes have been able to make money for endorsements that use their likenesses.

However, what started as a way to allow college athletes, who previously were not allowed to make any money or receive any gifts, to make money has transformed into something that now dominates the conversation in terms of recruitment.

Kirby Smart seems to prefer to focus on developing players to allow them to be the best they can be to set them up to make money as top talents in the NFL.

This is the traditional role of a coach, and it is something that may become less common as the NIL's hold on college football grows.

But Kirby Smart is not the only one to think like this.

Kirby Smart echos Nick Saban's view

On Tuesday, former Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban participated in a roundtable discussion about the current state of college sports with numerous U.S. senators on Capitol Hill.

The main topic of conversation was the NIL and the transfer portal. Both are linked.

There is a rising number of cases where a player has entered the portal with the program they have chosen based on potential NIL earnings.

Saban, like Smart, spoke about the NIL's hold on college sports:

“"All the things that I believed in, for all these years, 50 years of coaching, no longer exist in college athletics. It always was about developing players, it was always about helping people be more successful in life. … She (Saban's wife Terry) said, 'All they care about is how much you're going to pay them. They don't care about how much you're going to develop them, which is what we've always done, so why are we doing this?'"

The quotes from Smart and Saban show the realization that college athletes are starting to care less about how working with a coach like Saban or Smart will help them develop as players.

This is something that two of college football's successful coaches do not support and may never support.

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