Nick Saban spent 17 years telling Alabama fans he wasn't leaving – and then he did, handing the program off to a coach who's already lost 22 players to the transfer portal in a single off-season.
Now Saban is back in action, and this time he's not recruiting linebackers – he's lobbying the President of the United States.
And what Trump, Saban, Urban Meyer, and Ron DeSantis put together on a West Palm Beach golf course last Sunday has the NCAA watching its back.
What Nick Saban and Urban Meyer Told Trump About College Football's Crisis
Nick Saban. Urban Meyer. Ron DeSantis. Donald Trump.
When those four names showed up in a Politico pool report from the president's West Palm Beach club last Sunday, everyone assumed it was a photo op.
Urban Meyer corrected that assumption fast.
"What brought this on is just conversation about the positives and negatives of not just college football, college sports," Meyer said on The Triple Option podcast Tuesday.
Meyer described Trump as someone who listened – a president who sat on the back nine and took in decades of institutional knowledge from two coaches who between them won 10 national championships.
https://twitter.com/3xOptionShow/status/2024156329116397740?s=20
Saban had already told Pat McAfee what Trump is like in those conversations: "President Trump is a great sports fan. He loves sports. He loves football, he loves all kinds of sports. And if you ever talk to him, that's all he wants to talk about."
While Congress Sleeps, NIL Chaos Has Players Suing Each Other
Here's what Saban and Meyer actually walked Trump through on that golf course.
College football right now is a sport where one-third of all Division I scholarship players entered the transfer portal in a single two-week window this January.
Georgia sued a defensive lineman named Damon Wilson for leaving after one season at Missouri – and Wilson countersued.
At Ole Miss, a quarterback played in a College Football Playoff semifinal while waiting to find out if an NIL deal he'd already signed was even legal.
Wisconsin sued Miami – Miami the school – claiming the Hurricanes used illegal NIL money to lure away a defensive back named Xavier Lucas.
Major programs are spending over $20 million per roster – and the rules that were supposed to cap that spending are being circumvented almost immediately.
"You see LSU say they've got 25 mil for NIL, and you see that they're skirting the rules," one Big 12 general manager told 247Sports. "We don't have that kind of money."
https://twitter.com/NickAdamsinUSA/status/2023166286851707013?s=20
Trump Signed the Executive Order. Congress Killed the NIL Reform Bill. Now What?
What most fans don't know is that Trump moved on college sports months ago.
He signed an executive order on July 24, 2025 – titled "Saving College Sports" – banning third-party pay-for-play NIL arrangements and directing federal agencies to clean up the mess.
He proposed a presidential commission co-chaired by Saban to follow through on it.
The SCORE Act – the legislation Congress needed to pass to give any of that executive action actual teeth – cleared committee last July and then died on the House floor without a vote.
And here's the pattern your friends in the media aren't connecting: every time Trump moves on something through executive action, Democrats find a way to make sure Congress never follows through.
College sports isn't inherently left or right – DeSantis was the first governor in the country to sign NIL legislation, and he sat at that West Palm Beach table too.
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But the structural fixes college football needs – federal antitrust protection for the NCAA, a uniform national NIL law to replace the 50-state patchwork, and legal clarity on whether student-athletes are employees – require Congress to act.
Democrats have blocked all three.
Sunday's golf summit brought together Saban's institutional memory, Meyer's operational experience, DeSantis' legislative track record, and a president who has already signed one executive order on this exact problem and is clearly not finished.
They should probably ask themselves what happened the last time they decided to stand between Donald Trump and something he actually cared about.
Sources:
- Urban Meyer, The Triple Option podcast, February 17, 2026.
- Nick Saban, The Pat McAfee Show, November 7, 2025.
- Isaac Arnsdorf and Alex Leary, Politico/Wall Street Journal pool report, February 16, 2026.
- Front Office Sports, "Football Transfer Portal Chaos Continues Despite New Rules," January 2, 2026.
- Fox Sports, "The transfer portal era and pursuit of NIL money is messy. Are there solutions?" January 9, 2026.
- Fox News, "House pulls NIL college sports bill after GOP defections, Democratic opposition," December 25, 2025.
- Yahoo Sports, "Sources: President Trump creating commission on college sports," May 8, 2025.
- Saul Ewing LLP, "Saving College Sports: What You Need to Know About the July 24, 2025 Executive Order," July 2025.
