Tommy Tuberville: "NIL is in dire need of restructuring"

A college sports commission is coming. And it’s coming for the money the players are now making.

If that wasn’t obvious, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) made it so in comments to CNN that were broadcast on Sunday.

“He’s got a commission that he’s putting together,” Tuberville said regarding President Trump’s plan to save college sports from itself. “I’ve recommended some people to go on it, of course. I’ve been working on it for four years. Nick Saban is gonna be involved. I think the NIL is in dire need of restructuring.”

And there it is. When Tuberville says “NIL is in dire need of restructuring,” he means that the players need to be making less money. And that they need to have less flexibility to go from one school to another, in order to make more money — or to simply be happier with their situation.

Earlier this month, Tuberville made his views clear regarding the preferred outcome during a radio interview: “Everybody would be on the same level. We’ve got to come up with some rules for the transfer portal, possibly a contract for players. We do not want to turn into minor league sports. I talked to [Auburn men’s basketball coach] Bruce Pearl a few weeks ago, he says it’s a disaster, absolute disaster in basketball, and I’m sure it goes over into football and some of the other sports.”

It’s a “disaster” for the schools, not the players. It’s a “disaster” for the school because decades of antitrust violations have yielded to a free market for player services. And, like so many other issues that aren’t really issues, some in politics are trying to take a trumped-up “disaster” and make it into a crisis that cries out for a solution that isn’t actually needed.

And, of course, Tuberville believes that anyone who opposes an outcome that saves the colleges to the detriment of the players hates America.

“I think we can get [legislation] on the floor, the problem is getting it past a Democrat group that really wants nothing to do with making this country better,” Tuberville said in the same radio interview. “They don’t care about college sports or education, they worry about the power that they control in this country.

What of caring about the players who will see their compensation drop and mobility restricted as a result of the NIL reform? Does it “make the country better” to artificially restrict someone’s earnings and flexibility?

Aren’t we all supposed to have the right to pursue happiness?

Tuberville, Saban, and their ilk are trafficking in multiple false presumptions, in an effort to engineer “happiness” for the colleges and the coaches. One, that college sports is broken. Two, that the colleges shouldn’t be expected to fix the problem on their own. Three, that big-time college sports is truly about education. Four, that there’s something bad about young men making as much money as they can.

It’s all one gigantic crock of shit. At its core, this is about a certain group of people making things the way they want them to be, not the way they need to be. And if, as we predict, the upcoming college sports commission has no true voice to advocate for the rights of the players, it will be a sham aimed at turning back the clock to the days when the colleges (and the coaches) had the power and the players didn’t.

Here’s what they want, in a nutshell: Amateur sports from the perspective of the players who will once again be exploited by the system, and professional sports from the fat cats who can return to the days of lighting their backroom cigars with $100 bills.