"This is a life issue to me" - Skip Bayless rails against Nick Saban's opinion on NIL deals for college athletes

Nick Saban has racked up seven National Championships in his coaching career. With him, Alabama have become the dominant force in college football. So, is it any wonder other schools would go out of their way to poach promising players out of high school to compete?

In recent comments at an event with local business leaders in Birmingham, Saban called out other schools, specifically Texas A&M, for offering players money to steer them away from competing schools.

Saban said:

"I mean, we were second in recruiting last year, A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team—made a deal for name, image, likeness. We didn't buy one player, all right? But I don't know if we're gonna be able to sustain that in the future because more and more people are doing it. It's tough."

Saban went on to talk about the NIL, the college rule which allows athletes to get paid:

"That's not what it was supposed to be. That's what it's become. And that's the problem in college athletics right now. Now every player is saying, 'Well, what am I going to get?'"

Not one to lay down on college players getting paid, Skip Bayless discussed Saban's comments with Shannon Sharpe on the Fox Sports show Undisputed.

Bayless said:

"This is a life issue to me. I have campaigned my entire career for college kids, especially football players, to get paid, right. It's the biggest revenue sport in college. And it's one of the biggest revenue producers in America."

Bayless added that college players don't get paid because many argue that they get tuition, rooms, and books:

"And they don't get a dime because everybody always used to argue that they get tuition, they get room, they get books. They often (quote-on-quote) "die for the cause" because how many kids have come along who had a good to great NFL career ahead of them and they wreck their knee in college? You know the rest of the story, they never get right."

Nick Saban is one of college football's winningest coaches, but paid athletes would change the recruiting process

Saban's Alabama team has been great at recruiting because of their continued success. Kids fresh out of high school want to play for Saban to contend for a championship, and Alabama is ranked No. 1 in the country most of the time. Is it a surprise when other schools use cash to contend?

Bayless argues that college kids should get paid to play. They should be able to make money off endorsements. As it stands, coaches like Saban have multi-million dollar contracts while the players take all the risks. Most of them won't get the chance to have a high-paying NFL career. It's no wonder many of them enter the draft early to start earning money for their skills.