Associated Press

An attorney in the $2.8 billion legal case reshaping college sports said Monday he thinks “the agreement we will reach with the NCAA will solve the judge’s concerns” over roster limits that have delayed final approval.

Steve Berman, co-lead counsel for the defendants, told The Associated Press that all is on track to file paperwork by Wednesday, which is U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken’s deadline for addressing concerns that prevented her from granting approval to the deal last month.

Berman said he created a chart listing the several dozen athletes who lodged objections to the agreement based on roster limits. He said he thinks almost every one will be offered a solution.

“We’re still negotiating, and I’m confident that everyone who lost a roster spot will have a chance to get a spot back,” he said.

He did not go into detail about whether those spots would be on their previous teams or new ones.

NCAA vice president of external affairs Tim Buckley said the NCAA would not comment on the litigation while negotiations are ongoing.

Wilken looked favorably on other key components of the settlement — namely, the up to $20.5 million some schools can pay their athletes for name, image likeness (NIL) deals and the nearly $2.8 billion in back pay that will go to players who said the NCAA and five biggest conferences wrongly kept them from earning NIL money.

But she asked lawyers to rework the part of the deal that will replace scholarship limits with roster limits. It’s a proposal that could make more overall scholarship money available but could cost thousands of athletes their spots on rosters in moves that began shortly after Wilken gave preliminary approval to the deal last fall.

The NCAA’s first response to Wilken’s request — which included the idea of “grandfathering in” current players to their roster spots — was to change nothing, arguing that undoing roster moves already in play would create more turmoil in an already chaotic process.

Wilken wasn’t moved, saying in her April 24 order that “any disruption that may occur is a problem of Defendants’ and NCAA members schools’ own making.”

Berman acknowledged that the objectors likely wouldn’t approve of the new deal being worked on.

“But I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal,” he said, because it is designed to find roster spots for virtually all the individual athletes who objected.

Attorney: Saban should stay on the sideline

Berman also criticized Nick Saban after reports emerged that the retired Alabama football coach was urging President Donald Trump to undo damage he says has been caused by all the money flowing into college sports.

The Wall Street Journal reported Trump is considering an executive order that would call for some sort of structure behind NIL compensation now going toward players who are now able to move more freely between schools.

Berman said he believes an executive order would be subject to lawsuits “like there are against so many of his other orders.”

“But here, the question is, ‘Why does the president need to get involved?’” Berman said, while outlining the financial gains players have made in the NIL era. “Just because Nick Saban thinks he knows better and resents change? This is a coach who made more money off college football than any other coach, did absolutely nothing to make it right for these student-athletes. Why should he drive the president’s thinking?”

Saban, who made more than $11 million in his last year at Alabama and who some have said should become the commissioner of college football — a position that doesn’t exist — has said he isn’t completely against players making money.

But he has argued for rules and laws to keep things from looking like the “pay for play” model that the NCAA hopes to avoid but that is often what NIL payments look like.

___

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

—— The five independent schools in college hockey have formed the United Collegiate Hockey Cup, an end-of-season tournament that will be hosted at Lindenwood’s Centene Community Ice Center.

The inaugural tournament will be held from March 5-7, 2026. The tournament winner will not receive an automatic NCAA Tournament bid, but it will provide a championship experience for the independent programs, which include Alaska, Alaska Anchorage, Lindenwood, Long Island, and Stonehill.

St. Louis just hosted the 2025 Frozen Four and also hosted a regional at Centene Community Ice Center in 2024.

“We are thrilled to bring this tournament to the St. Louis market,” said Jason Coomer, Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics at Lindenwood University. “This event not only provides a competitive platform for our student-athletes but also showcases the growth and quality of independent NCAA hockey programs on a national stage.”

The format for the five-team tournament will include a play-in game. All teams are guaranteed at least two games over the three days of competition. It will be single elimination, and they will use the Pairwise rankings for seeding purposes.

“The ability to compete for a championship is an important part of every student-athlete’s experience, and we are excited this event will provide that opportunity for each participating program,” said Dean O’Keefe, Director of Athletics at Stonehill College. “We appreciate the St. Louis community welcoming this inaugural event to their region, and we look forward to Stonehill being part of this Division I post-season tournament.”

Tickets for the inaugural United Collegiate Hockey Cup will go on sale this summer (August 1) through Lindenwood’s ticket office.

“The passion and dedication of these student-athletes deserves to be highlighted,” said Brock Anundson, Director of Athletics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “This tournament is about creating meaningful postseason opportunities and demonstrating the strength of these hockey programs in the NCAA landscape. We’re grateful to Lindenwood and the St. Louis community for hosting this inaugural event.”

Notably, this tournament does not involve Tennessee State, which is scheduled to launch as an independent program next season.

However, TSU has faced huge financial hurdles, and the school said the team would have to be self-funded. People in the program are trying to raise the funds, but it seems increasingly less likely that TSU will be ready for the 2025-26 season.

At this point, I’d be more surprised if they did compete as a D-I independent than if they did not.

Vanderbilt Director of Athletics Candice Storey Lee, Missouri Valley Conference Deputy Commissioner Jill Redmond and Maryland Interim Athletics Director Colleen Sorem have been appointed to serve on the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee.

Lee will be filling the position vacated by Derita Dawkins of Arkansas, who served as committee chair in 2024-25 in the final year of her five years on the committee. Redmond fills the position vacated by Lizzie Gomez, who had served on the committee since 2022 and whose term was set to expire at the end of August. Gomez recently announced a move from the Southland Conference to the Big 12 Conference. Sorem replaces five-year committee veteran Deneé Barracato of Northwestern, who was recently named multiarea director for the Chicagoland Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Redmond and Sorem’s appointments are effective immediately, while Lee’s term will begin Sept. 1.  

Named Vanderbilt director of athletics in May 2020, Lee is Vanderbilt’s first female athletics director and the first Black woman to head a Southeastern Conference athletics program. A former member of the Vanderbilt women’s basketball team, Lee has earned undergraduate, master’s and doctorate degrees from the Vanderbilt Peabody College of Education and Human Development and has been a leader in athletics and the wider Vanderbilt community since arriving on campus as a first-year student in 1996.

“It’s a great honor to serve and support a sport that has meant so much to me personally and professionally,” Lee said. “I remember the thrill of competing with my teammates in the NCAA tournament, and I look forward to being a part of a committee that helps make that dream come true for so many talented student-athletes.”

Redmond joined the Missouri Valley in August 2023 and is involved with all organizational and operational aspects of the conference. She came to the conference after spending 13 years at the Atlantic 10 Conference. Redmond, who also has previously worked in the Richmond, Dartmouth and Benedictine (Illinois) athletics departments, completed her undergraduate degree at DePaul, where she was a track and field student-athlete, and earned a master’s degree from Benedictine.

“I am truly honored and humbled to represent the Missouri Valley Conference on the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee,” Redmond said. “It is a privilege to serve the Division I membership and the sport of women’s basketball alongside such outstanding professionals on the committee and within the NCAA national office.”

Sorem, who has worked at Maryland for 10 years, served as Maryland’s senior deputy athletics director/chief operating officer before being named interim athletics director March 21. Before Maryland, Sorem was a senior associate athletics director at Towson and associate athletics director at Florida Gulf Coast. She joined the Florida Gulf Coast staff in 2008 after six years at UMass Lowell. Sorem is a 2000 graduate of James Madison and obtained her master’s from Alabama in 2002.

“I am truly honored to be selected to the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee,” Sorem said. “At Maryland, we have a long tradition of success and support for women’s basketball, and representing the Big Ten Conference in this capacity is an opportunity I accept with great pride. The women’s game has been experiencing an exciting and unprecedented amount of growth over the past few years. As someone who is passionate about the game and supporting our fearless women, I look forward to contributing to the future of women’s basketball alongside my fellow committee members.”

Lee, Redmond and Sorem will be part of the 12-member committee that will be chaired in 2025-26 by Amanda Braun, director of athletics at Milwaukee. Other committee members include Vicky Chun of Yale; Liz Darger of Brigham Young; Jill Bodensteiner of Saint Joseph’s; Amy Folan of Central Michigan; Alex Gary of Western Carolina; Josh Heird of Louisville; Jeff Konya of San Jose State; and Lynn Tighe of Villanova.

HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TNND) — It’s been nearly four years since the NCAA enacted a new policy allowing college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, and just a few weeks since a federal judge opened the door for college athletic departments to pay athletes directly.

Much of the details are still being worked out in the courts. Key components like roster limits, scholarship limits and payment pools are still up in the air.

As is a governing body to oversee all of these new rules, since most current regulation is a patchwork of state laws, legal settlements and NCAA rules.

But, we are starting to see the impacts of college athletes getting paid – and what it means for the enterprise as a whole.

Depending on who you ask, the historical shift is: long overdue for athletes who’ve spent thousands of hours grinding for their craft; late to the party in terms of global sports; the official death certificate for amateurism and the “student” side of “student-athlete”; or, an inevitable reality that has to run wild before it gets reined in and regulated.

To the league itself, it’s a positive step.

When a judge granted preliminary approval for a framework for schools to pay athletes, NCAA President Charlie Baker said it would “help bring stability and sustainability to college athletics while delivering increased benefits to student athletes for years to come.”

The push for college athletes to get paid spans decades, with legal challenges and legislative efforts dating back to at least the early 2000s. Which is surprising, considering the NCAA has been a multi-million dollar industry for several decades, and a multi-billion dollar industry for about a decade.

That disparity is due to the idea of “amateurism,” a word many experts and analysts use when they cite concerns about completely commercializing college sports. That idea goes back more than a century, to 1800s England, where sports were only for the wealthy, and the working class didn’t want them to be able to pay their way to victory.

“I don’t want to say [amateurism] is going to die, but it will certainly be the commercial aspects that are going to permeate,” said David Hedlund, the chairman of the Division of Sport Management at St. John’s University. “I think we’re going to see and hear less and less about amateurism, and college sports are going to look more like professional sports, or a training ground for professional sports.”

The idea that sports are for enjoyment and the love of the game rather than money is a noble one. And players can love the game and make money off their talents at the same time.

But many experts say amateurism has long been dead; the NCAA was just, for whatever reason, the last organization behind the International Olympic Committee to let it die. It’s part of an effort to keep pace with the rest of the world. Overseas soccer and basketball players are spotted when they’re 12 to 14 years old, and go pro when they turn 18.

“We’re in a global marketplace,” said Matt Winkler, a professor and program director of sports analytics and management at American University. “We sort of have to keep up with the other nations if we want to strive and have those great moments in sports for our Olympic teams and our World Cup teams and so forth.”

Coaches have long been compensated, and universities have long profited off their sports teams.

“The money has always been there. It’s just a lot more front-facing now, I think, than it’s been in the past,” Hedlund said.

Some sports analysts say it was quite front-facing in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

March Madness was devoid of any significant upsets or Cinderella teams. For the first time in five decades, every team that made it to the Sweet 16 came from a power conference, including all four No. 1 seeds and all but one No. 2 seed.

And, every team that made it to the Final Four was a No. 1 seed.

ESPN analyst Stephen Smith said NIL deals and the now no-limits transfer portal are to blame for why mid-major programs didn’t see much success, and top-tier schools prevailed.

“If there was no NIL, if there was no portal and you have the mid-majors go 0-6 in the second round, please, we ain’t sweating that,” Smith said. “But when you’re able to point to rules that have been implemented that ultimately shows itself to have inflicted upon the game itself, that’s dangerous.

“College basketball as we knew it – which, to me, is all about March Madness – will cease to exist. Because there’s no madness.”

Experts say there is a serious question mark about the current state of how much colleges can pay to entice players, and how many times players can be enticed enough to transfer.

But not all believe it has to be the death of March Madness or competition in college sports. After all, there’s still Division 2 and 3 universities.

Richard Paulsen, a sports economist and professor at the University of Michigan, said it’s hard to gauge the impact of NIL deals and the transfer portal on competition. Because while the top ten or so power schools may be able to offer the most money to the elite players, there’s still a lot of talent out there.

“The top schools have an advantage in getting the A-level talent, but some of the players that might have sat on the bench at a top school previously could be enticed away with NIL money coming from a second tier school,” Paulsen said. “So I think the impact on competitive balance is maybe a little bit less clear.”

Paulsen says, as a professor, he is worried about the impact NIL deals – particularly million-dollar ones – can have on the students themselves, some 18, 19, 20 years old. It raises the question, does a teenager or young adult need this much money?

Shedeur Sanders is 23 years old, and his NIL valuation at the University of Colorado was roughly $6.5 million. Granted, he’s the son of NFL Hall of Famer and head coach for Colorado Deion Sanders.

But, his 2024 stats were top five in completion percentage, passing touchdowns and yards. Several analysts had him as the top prospect in the 2025 NFL draft, but he slid down to the fifth round, shocking much of the sports world.

Various reports place blame on other reasons – maybe he took more sacks than he should have, maybe NFL executives see traits we can’t see, maybe he bombed interviews with the managers, maybe it had to do with his Hall of Famer dad. And he certainly wouldn’t be the first prospect to get picked later than expected and prove all the teams that passed over him wrong.

But, he’s also losing money by going pro. The iced out, custom “Legendary” chain he wore on Draft Day reportedly cost $1 million.

“It is at least worth noting that five years ago, he wouldn’t have had the online presence that he had, and that could have turned off some NFL teams,” Paulsen said. “Without being in the rooms, I don’t know if it did, but that is possible, and it’s not something that would have been possible even five years ago.”

It begs the question, is it even worth going pro for these top-tier college athletes with insane NIL deals?

In the NBA, new data shows it may not be. The league announced last week just 106 players declared early for the 2025 draft. It’s the fewest since 2015. The number typically hovers around 300.

The drop in early entrants could be lingering effects of the extra COVID year.

But, next year, ten schools will pay their rosters somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million, including several million dollars per top player. That’s far more than the players would make if they were a second-round draft pick in the NBA.

Winkler said the combination of competitive rosters and the scope of these NIL deals has more to do with this drop in early declarations.

“These deals are getting so big that unless you’re going to be a first round draft choice, maybe if you’re going to be kind of a lottery pick or a top 10, 15 pick, it would be better for you to exhaust your eligibility on a major team, because you’re going to make more,” he said.

So, it might be financially advantageous for athletes to wait on the pros. Some announcers were even suggesting Sanders should go back to college if the NFL didn’t deem him ready for the show. (NCAA rules prohibit him from doing so anyway; he declared for the draft and signed with an agent).

But what about the fact that these players, who become millionaires, are still students?

Schools are working to provide resources for these athletes so they can get advice on what to do with their wealth, so that they don’t spend it irresponsibly. Which is not to assume all of them would; it goes without saying this money could greatly benefit an athlete who grew up in poverty and change the trajectory for his/her family.

But Paulsen says he worries about the “student” side of “student-athlete” when we start talking about millions upon millions of dollars and students transferring to whichever school offers them the most. Sometimes credits don’t transfer; sometimes players could feel pressure to fulfill their NIL commitments over their studies, when the stakes are that high.

At a young age, these players are under an unprecedented amount of pressure, from their coach, from their family, from their financial adviser, from social media, from broadcast exposure, from stakeholders, from the tens of millions of people who can now legally bet on them.

“Players should be able to leave bad situations, absolutely, and I certainly support players’ autonomy and chasing financial benefit from their athletic talents,” Paulsen said. “But if we’re going to call them student athletes, we should have some emphasis on the student part of that too. Some of these rules that are helping the athlete are hurting the student.”

One of those rules, he says, is the transfer portal. But in addition to harming the students’ academic careers, experts say this also takes a toll on teams and fans of those teams.

Take Nico Iamaleava for example. The star quarterback abruptly parted ways with Tennessee over an alleged compensation dispute with the school’s collective. He demanded an NIL readjustment to $4 million to keep playing for the Vols, and when they said no, he transferred to UCLA, though it’s unclear if they met his demands.

The exit shocked his teammates in Knoxville, with one of his receivers and defensive backs, Boo Carter, telling reporters, “He left his brothers behind.”

But the new pay-to-play system does also beg the question of school loyalty, not just for the players, but the fans too.

Paulsen says roster continuity, players spending all four years playing for one team, has been an endearing feature of sports like women’s college basketball, when you look at the legacies, for example, Caitlin Clark built at the University of Iowa, or Paige Bueckers at the University of Connecticut.

“I do think there’s definitely some extent to which all this player movement can have negative consequences,” he said.

But, some experts doubt fans of teams need to see the same or similar team year to year.

After all, this past NCAA Men’s March Madness Championship between Florida and Houston – the one ESPN’s Smith said featured no madness at all – scored 18.1 million viewers on CBS. That’s up 22% from last year’s championship, and the biggest audience since 2019.

The Final Four games, featuring all No. 1 seeds, ranked as the most-watched games in eight years.

In other words, so far, so good when it comes to college sports fandom.

One thing broadly agreed upon among experts is that competition must remain intact. The Florida-Houston matchup was a nailbiter.

“The biggest thing that would kill sports is if there is no competitive balance,” Hedlund said. “It is known when you have a really great team being a not-so-great team, if the great team probably will win, people don’t want to watch.”

People still appear to be watching. If they stop, one could assume the NCAA would change its course, or it’d be out of all its money too.

Plus, these experts expect regulation soon – possible measures like transfer restrictions, collectively bargained salary caps, conference realignment to avoid concentration, turning athletic departments into LLCs, putting degree completion into bylaws and evening out the number of roster spots, among other rules.

Experts say: be patient, wait for the legal fights to run their course, and wait for the brightest minds in sports – and Congress – to come up with a solution that pleases the players, teams, coaches, schools and fans.

“This is fundamental to the success of sports, so we just need to figure out what rules, what regulations, what governing bodies, how do we facilitate this?” Hedlund said. “We don’t want to ruin sports. That’s what’s at stake here.”

Winkler says it all comes down to the most “hardcore” stakeholders: fans and alumni. If the SEC and Big 10 just ganged up and created their own Premier League and college sports turned into checkbook sports, it could threaten that school pride.

“This year, we definitely saw cracks in the system,” Winkler said. “If the best athletes just go to the top, are [fans] rooting for an inferior product? Are they still going to have that affinity for their school, their team, their degrees, and people that are doing it? This is really going to test that.

“[Schools] have two key pressure points: keep getting a lot of money from TV so you can fund your athletic department, and keep alumni, fans and donors still feeling as engagedThere’s a lot to be worked out in the next several months and probably the next year to really get a boiler plate idea of what the rules and regulations need to be.”

DULUTH — Former Minnesota Duluth defensemen Neal Pionk and Dylan Samberg, both of Hermantown, played over 40 minutes each Sunday night for the Winnipeg Jets in a come-from-behind 4-3 double-overtime victory over the St. Louis Blues in Game 7 of their first round series.

Pionk had three assists and finished with 46 minutes, 15 seconds of ice time. He was credited with the primary assist on the game-winning goal after his shot from the blue line nicked Blues center Oskar Sundqvist and Jets’ captain Adam Lowry — who was given the goal — en route to the back of the net with 3:50 left in the second OT.

Pionk and Samberg assisted on

the extra-attacker goal by teammate Vladislav Namestnikov

that got the Jets back in the game as the Jets center pulled Winnipeg within one by putting a puck in off Blues defenseman Ryan Suter with 1:56 left in the game.

The Jets forced overtime and saved their season with

another extra attacker goal with 2.2 seconds left.

Pionk — who didn’t leave the ice much in the final three minutes of regulation — was on the ice for that goal, as well.

Winnipeg lost defenseman Josh Morrissey early in Game 7 on Sunday, leading to extra shifts for the five remaining defensemen. Samberg logged 44 minutes as the Jets face a quick turnaround for the second round, hosting the Dallas Stars on Wednesday.

Samberg and Pionk are two of four former Bulldogs playing for the Jets this postseason along with former UMD forwards/linemates Alex Iafallo and Dominic Toninato. Iafallo was on the ice for two of the final three Winnipeg goals while Toninato — playing in his third NHL postseason — suited up for the second time in the series.

Iafallo, Toninato and Pionk were teammates on UMD’s 2016-17 team that lost to Denver in the NCAA championship in Chicago. The coach of the Pioneers was Jim Montgomery, who is now coach of the St. Louis Blues.

James Carey Lauder / Imagn Images via Reuters Connect

Samberg won back-to-back national championships at UMD as a freshman in 2018 and sophomore in 2019 while he and the Bulldogs shot at a three-peat was dashed by COVID-19 in 2020.

The four “Winnipeg Bulldogs” are the only UMD alumni remaining in the Stanley Cup Playoffs after Justin Faulk and the Blues were beaten on Sunday. Mikey Anderson and the Los Angeles Kings lost in the first round to the Edmonton Oilers.

Three former UMD Bulldogs are chasing a second-consecutive Professional Women’s Hockey League Walter Cup championship while seven are seeking their first PWHL postseason title this spring.

The defending champion Minnesota Frost will take on the Toronto Sceptres in a best-of-three series that begins Wednesday while the Montreal Victoire host the Ottawa Charge beginning on Thursday.

Fourth-seeded Minnesota is the defending champs and returns three former Bulldogs from last year’s title team in forward Michela Cava, defenseman Maggie Flaherty and goaltender Maddie Rooney. The former UMD goalie enters the postseason second in the league in goals against average at 2.07.

The third-seeded Charge are making their first postseason appearance after missing the inaugural tournament. They feature five former Bulldogs, including Jocelyne Larocque, Katerina Mrazova, Gabbie Hughes, Ashton Bell and Mannon McMahon.

The Charge and Frost both needed wins Saturday — the final day of the regular season — to get in the playoffs, with the Frost needed two regulation wins in their final two games to get in. The first win came over the Charge, who then needed an overtime goal by Mrazova — playing Saturday with a broken hand — to get in.

Montreal is the top seed and got to choose its first round opponent, picking Ottawa. Former Bulldog Catherine Daoust has been a reserve player for Montreal this year, playing in one game.

Annika (Linser) Rankila is the lone former Bulldog playing for second-seeded Toronto, but has dressed for just three games this year.

This story originally listed the incorrect start date for the second-round series between the Winnipeg Jets and Dallas Stars. It was updated at 2:10 p.m. May 5. The series begins Wednesday. The News Tribune regrets the error.

A law firm involved in the historic $2.8 billion antitrust lawsuit settlement involving the NCAA and the nation’s five largest conferences ripped former college football coach Nick Saban and the possibility of an executive order from the Trump administration to deal with name, image and likeness.

Attorneys at the Hagens Berman law firm released a statement on Monday calling Saban’s reported involvement in the potential executive order “unmerited and unhelpful.” Steve Berman, the firm’s managing partner and co-founder, called Saban and Trump’s talks “unneeded.”

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Nick Saban speaks before President Donald Trump arrives to give a commencement address at the University of Alabama, May 1, 2025, in Tuscaloosa. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

“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,’” Berman said in a 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.”

The firm added there were a number of ways college athletes have benefitted from NIL without any executive orders from the White House in any administration. The firm said it empowered athletes to earn their own income, among other positives.

Fox News Digital reached out to Saban’s rep for comment.

Trump was considering an executive order to regulate name, image and likeness in college sports after meeting with the legendary Alabama Crimson Tide coach, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. Saban reportedly doesn’t want to halt NIL payments but seeks to “reform” them.

Donald Trump shakes hands with former Alabama football coach Nick Saban before delivering a special commencement address to University of Alabama graduates, May 1, 2025, in Tuscaloosa. (Gary Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News)

BILL BELICHICK REPORTEDLY EXPLORING PR MOVE FOLLOWING AWKWARD TV INTERVIEW

In an appearance on Fox News Channel last year, Saban urged Congress to step in and make NIL “equal across the board.”

“And I think that should still exist for all players, but not just a pay-for-play system like we have now where whoever raises the most money in their collective can pay the most for the players, which is not a level playing field. I think in any competitive venue, you want to have some guidelines that gives everyone an equal opportunity to have a chance to be successful,” he said.

Saban said the NCAA “can handle” NIL and whatever changes are necessary, but Congress “needs to” add “national legislation.”

“Now, we just have the state legislation – and every state is different – that would protect the NCAA from litigation once we establish guidelines for the future of college athletics. But the litigation is what got us to this point right now,” Saban said. “We have to have some protection from litigation. I don’t know if it’s antitrust laws or whatever. 

“I’m not versed enough on all that to really make a recommendation. But I know we need some kind of federal standard and guidelines that allows people to enforce their own rules.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said “if anyone” can help regulate NIL, “it’s President Trump.”

Saban introduced Trump on Thursday at an event for Alabama’s graduating students, where Trump gave a speech.

(Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)

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In the speech, Trump raved about Alabama’s athletic programs, saying the school is a place “where legends are made.”

Fox News’ Ryan Morik and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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