Law firm at center of NIL House Settlement tells Nick Saban to butt out

In theory, the House Settlement awaiting final approval in the United States District Court of Judge Claudia Wilken could be getting its formal approval at any moment.

After all, it’s been more than a week since Wilken issued her requirement that the two sides in the proposed House Settlement to usher in a new era of revenue-sharing amongst NCAA college athletes revamp their proposed roster limits, most notably in football but also shrinking rosters in additional collegiate sports.

On Monday, days after President Donald Trump’s commencement speech at the University of Alabama and on the heels of the Wall Street Journal’s report that iconic former Tide coach Nick Saban had urged congressional action for Name, Image and Likeness legislation, the law firm of Hagens Berman issued a scathing retort to the report.

Hagens Berman issued the following statement on the firm’s own Web site:

“While he was a coach, Saban initially opposed NIL payments to athletes, pushing to add restrictions and red-tape through national legislation to add ‘some sort of control,'” Steve Berman, the firm’s co-founder and the court-appointed co-lead counsel in the litigation, said in his statement. “During his time scrutinizing the athlete pay structure, he made tens of millions of dollars and was previously the highest-paid coach in college football.

“Coach Saban and Trump’s eleventh-hour talks of executive orders and other meddling are just more unneeded self-involvement. College athletes are spearheading historic changes and benefitting massively from NIL deals. They don’t need this unmerited interference from a coach only seeking to protect the system that made him tens of millions.”

Saban, who’s been reported to have earned approximately $150 million across his decades-long coaching career, almost all of in the college ranks and who exited his post atop the Alabama program after the 2023 season as the sport’s highest-paid coach, has said the current, essentially unregulated format of NIL is unsustainable and offers a distinct advantage to deeper-pocketed programs such as Alabama, Texas, Ohio State and more.

Both sides in the House Settlement have agreed to the financial terms, which could include billions in backpay to former NCAA student-athletes as well as a guaranteed revenue-share of monies derived from college athletics, everything from broadcasting rights to merchandise revenues and more.

Once formally ratified, the House Settlement is slated to have NCAA member insitutions who opt in at the max amount — $20.5 million — distributing that revenue by July 1, 2025.