I watched Nick Saban stand up there in front of Congress this week talking about the Protect College Sports Act and it just about broke my heart because here is a man who built seven national championships the old fashioned way. He recruited kids out of high school, developed them over three or four years, watched them grow from boys into men and then sent them off to the NFL with a degree and a ring. Now he is begging lawmakers to bring order to a system that has gone completely off the rails. Reminds me of when Coach Bryant walked into that boardroom in 1981 and told the NCAA exactly what he thought about their ridiculous rules. Same fire in the eyes. Same conviction that this game means something bigger than a paycheck.
You look at what college football has become and it is enough to make a grown man weep. Oregon has five 5-star croots in their 2026 class but nobody knows if any of them will still be there in two years. Dylan Raiola left Nebraska for Oregon and now he is competing with Dante Moore. Kids are transferring two and three times before they ever play a meaningful snap in November. I remember when you committed to Alabama and that was it. You were one of us. You bled crimson. You did not have one foot in the portal while you were still going to class.
The spring portal window got eliminated starting this year and that is the first smart thing the NCAA has done in a decade. But we still have this nonsense where Oklahoma State brought in 50 transfers and Colorado brought in 43. Fifty transfers. That is not a football team. That is a fantasy football roster. You cannot build a program that way. You cannot teach a kid what it means to be a Sooner or a Buffalo in one spring practiice. That kind of culture takes years. Coach Stallings took over in 1990 and we did not win it all until 1992 because you have to let things marinate. You cannot microwave a championship.
I will say this much. Seeing Saban up there fighting for some common sense gives me a little hope. If anybody can get through to those folks in Washington it is him. He has more credibility than every politician in that room combined. But I have been around long enough to know that Congress moves slower than a Gene Stallings power sweep. By the time they pass anything the whole sport might be unrecognizable. All I know is I am glad I got to see the real Alabama football before all this nonsense took over.