As Saban and Fisher feud, South Carolina’s Shane Beamer sounds off about NIL direction
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The annual Southeastern Conference spring meetings in Destin, Florida are 11 days away. As of Thursday, the SEC might need to add a steel-cage wrestling match over the roaring name, image and likeness debate to the schedule of events.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban drew headlines Wednesday night when he suggested that Texas A&M and head coach Jimbo Fisher paid players for their services en route to the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class in the 2022 cycle.
“I know the consequence is going to be difficult for the people who are spending tons of money to get players,” Saban said at an event promoting the World Games, which will be held in Birmingham in July. “You read about it. You know who they are. 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 and likeness.”
Those words eventually reached Fisher — a former Saban assistant at LSU — who called a surprise press conference Thursday to, at best, clarify and, in practice, light a nuclear fuse on the war of words between former colleagues.
“It’s despicable that a reputable head coach can come out and say this when he doesn’t get his way or things don’t go his way,” Fisher said on Thursday. “The narcissist in him doesn’t allow those things to happen. It’s ridiculous when he’s not on top. And the parity in college football that he’s been talking about? Go talk to coaches who’ve coached for him. You’ll find out all the parity. Go dig into wherever he’s been. You can find out anything.”
That NIL has become a focal point of college football’s talking season shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Administrators and coaches around the sport have become wary of the name, image and likeness rule that launched a year ago and was designed to allow student-athletes to profit off their personal brands. The landscape has seemingly devolved into teams paying recruits to choose a certain college under the guise of promised and often lucrative NIL deals.
Prior to the explosion of Saban’s comments and Fisher’s escalation of the situation, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer spoke with boosters at a Gamecock Club event in Rock Hill on Wednesday night.
Beamer spent the bulk of the night discussing the usual musings of his Welcome Home Tour stops. There were jokes about previous USC staffs not recruiting the hotbed of talent located just south of Charlotte. He also mentioned through a laugh that he signed a prayer candle with his face on it for a fan earlier in the night.
South Carolina’s second-year coach, too, was asked how NIL fits into college football under the current climate, unbeknownst to anyone in the room how fervently that debate would pick up in a matter of 24 hours.
“I’m all for guys being able to (profit),” Beamer said. Gamecocks receiver “Dakereon Joyner, for example, after that bowl game — I think he’s brought in over six figures since that bowl game. He used it to put on a camp back in his hometown, which he did last weekend. Our players used some of that money to take underprivileged kids shopping on a shopping spree before Christmas. That’s how the rule was intended to be used.
“What I don’t like is it’s turned into buying recruits, and that’s not what the rule was intended to be. That’s my honest, politically correct answer on all that, but I think most most college coaches will tell you that the way it is right now is not sustainable and it’s not what it was intended to be.”
The NCAA has largely stepped aside as far as regulating NIL. The fear within the athletics community is that any kind of limitations put on deals would lead to legal battles college sports’ governing body would rather avoid.
The NCAA did put out guidance — which was just that, guidance — regarding NIL on May 9 in response to the increased involvement of third-party organizations branded as “collectives.”
Often presented as non-profits or other booster-type organizations, the groups allegedly pool money from boosters under the premise of NIL deals and direct it one of two places: to current athletes through endorsements or appearances, or to prospects in the form of financial promises if they sign with that university.
This runs contrary to the NCAA’s current rules that allow for student-athletes to profit off their likenesses, but still bans those who fall under its definition of “boosters” from being involved in the recruiting process.
Texas A&M, for example, has earned plenty of publicity for its alleged use of NIL collectives to bring in elite football recruits over the last calendar year. That, at least in part, sparked the ongoing back-and-forth between Saban and Fisher.
“We need to figure out the best way to get it under control for us, for the student-athletes and for everyone involved,” Beamer said.
