{"id":418473,"date":"2026-01-20T10:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T10:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/418473\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T10:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T10:05:07","slug":"nick-saban-trolls-big-ten-provides-hilarious-reason-they-have-nil-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/418473\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Saban trolls Big Ten, provides hilarious reason they have NIL advantage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Saban<\/a> said the modern era of college football benefits the Big Ten the most out of all of the conferences. With the transfer portal and NIL the primary goal for roster construction, the Big Ten reaps the awards, per the seven-time national champion coach.<\/p>\n

Was Saban honest or was he trolling? Maybe a little of both, as he detailed on Monday\u2019s Pat McAfee Show.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this day and age of the culture we have now in college football, paying players, name, image and likeness, transfer, it\u2019s an advantage for the Big Ten,\u201d Saban said.<\/a> \u201cYou\u2019ll never convince me otherwise. The North. Because people in the South would not go to the North unless you paid them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahead of Indiana<\/a>\u2013Miami<\/a> in Monday\u2019s College Football Playoff<\/a> National Championship Game, Saban conceded a game like this is good for the programs and for the sport as a whole. Of course, he said that before poking fun at the Big Ten, repped by Indiana this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good for college football when teams like Indiana do what they\u2019ve done,\u201d Saban said. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s great for college football. Gives everybody hope that we can turn our program around, we can have success, and we have the right people in the right culture. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s also great for college football when communities like Miami, the \u2018U\u2019 and the tradition that they have, get back into it \u2026 there\u2019s a lot of interest in that. So this game, to me, is tremendous for both sides, and whoever wins, it\u2019s going to be great for college football.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should Indiana win and finish 16-0, it\u2019d be the greatest turnaround in college football history. Saban actually had some interesting words about the possibility of Indiana regularly being in this position.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that these guys are going to have to go through, which Curt\u2019s going to have to go through, is, he has done this phenomenal job in Indiana. Everybody wanted to come to Indiana. People wanted to transfer there,\u201d Saban said<\/a>. \u201cEverybody wanted to go there because they wanted to prove something. That\u2019s how it was at Alabama. Then, when you win in 2009 and you climbed the mountain successfully, you become the mountain.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, everybody wants to come because of what your program can do for them, and that dynamic changes everything dramatically, in terms of how you got to motivate your players, how you put together your team. Our 2009 team was the first national championship at Alabama.<\/p>\n

\u201cJulio [Jones], Mark Barron, all those guys came to Alabama because they wanted to prove something. They were Alabama guys. But, once we won, everybody was coming to Alabama for what Alabama could do for them, and that changed the dynamic dramatically, and that was more challenging for me as a coach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Saban said the modern era of college football benefits the Big Ten the most out of all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,127580,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-418473","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-nick-saban-69-monongah","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}