Nick Saban details how much Alabama's collective has spent on the football roster

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban detailed how much the Crimson Tide’s collective spent every year for the past five years in a Senate committee hearing Wednesday morning about the Protect College Sports Act.

Saban, who voiced his support for the bill introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, said during his testimony that “my first year we had a collective at Alabama,” it spent $2.7 million. It spent $7 million the next year, he said, then had $10 million for the roster during Saban’s final season in 2023.

Saban said the collective spent $17 million a year later and $24 million in what would have been the 2025 season. In the second year under coach Kalen DeBoer last fall, Alabama went 11-4 and lost to eventual national champions Indiana in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals.

“Now you have schools that have close to $40 million rosters,” Saban said. “If we continue to do that, we’re going to lose Olympic sports, we’re going to lose non-revenue sports, we’re going to lose scholarships, and basically what’s going to happen is you’re going to have football and basketball succeed, and we’ll have club sports for everything else with no scholarships. 

“That’s horrible. We can’t let that happen, and I think we have to continue to figure out ways that we can raise revenue so that we can keep all sports and all opportunities for young people intact.”