For the second time in three months, Nick Saban faced a federal committee to discuss how to improve college athletics. This time, though, the Alabama head coach didn’t pull any punches. While supporting the Cruz-Cantwell bill before the Senate Commerce Committee, Saban not only went against his former conference but also called out the blatant tampering.

“Clemson had a player that was on campus for a whole week, and they came and got him off campus and took him somewhere else,” Saban said to the committee, as per Ben Portnoy. “These kinds of things going on in college football are absolutely not what anybody, any of us, signed up for relative to the educational institutions that we’ve all tried to represent,” he added.

The ESPN broadcaster was referring to the Luke Ferrelli transfer saga in January, which became a major talking point after Dabo Swinney accused Ole Miss and Pete Golding of tampering during a one-hour press conference. The Tigers’ head coach called out Golding for allegedly texting Ferrelli while the latter was already attending classes at Clemson. Saban used the example to illustrate what all is going wrong with college athletics these days.

“I’m not representing any conference or any team; I’m just a former college coach who cares about college sports. I have spent most of my adult life in college athletics. I believe in it because I have seen what it can do for young people. Have seen players come into a program needing structure, discipline, coaching, academic support, and accountability. I have seen them leave with a degree, a career, a family, and a better chance to be successful,” Saban added.

NCAA was two steps ahead of Swinney’s explosive pre-conference. After obtaining an open records request through ESPN, the NCAA launched a full-blown investigation into the Luke Ferreli scandal. Golding did not indulge until now, when he came fully prepared for the spring meet. The main defense he holds right now is that ‘if I go down, I will take everyone down with me’. He allegedly holds “receipts” proving rampant tampering by other programs that he will expose if the NCAA imposes any penalty.

“It’s a problem in every sport,” Golding said. “They’re talking about tampering, you don’t think coaches get tampered with? Don’t you think athletic directors meet with head coaches? I mean, we’re talking about this new (Lane) Kiffin (tampering) rule.”

Issues raised by Nick Saban in his testimony

Pete Golding’s proves that college football needs a proper framework, and Nick Saban’s testimony was not to save himself or take everyone down with him; it was pure concern for the sport he gave half of his life to. ESPN college football analyst called the PCSA “a serious, bipartisan effort to bring order to a system that badly needs it.”

NIL was introduced for student-athletes to provide for themselves, but its vague structure has mostly resulted in it being abused or in a lawsuit. That is what Saban also believes is happening; rather than improving a student’s life, it has turned entirely into an asset to win a player over.

“That is not the same thing as turning NIL into a pay-for-play system. It is not the same thing as using collectives and outside entities to create a bidding war for recruits and transfers. When the system becomes whoever raises the most money gets the best players, then we are no longer talking about college athletics as millions of fans, and I have known it, Saban said.

Lastly, Saban made it clear that he does not want “Congress to micromanage college athletics. But Congress does need to fix the mess in the courts and create a national framework so the people inside college sports can enforce fair rules.”

Congress has not set a fixed date to pass the act, but lawmakers will review the legislation and hold final votes during the summer of 2026. Meanwhile, the NCAA will issue its final ruling on Pete Golding later that year.