Is Alabama Losing Because It's Fallen Behind In NIL? Or Is That An Excuse?
Former quarterback says Alabama has less than $20M in NIL while competitors spend double that amount
It's a new era for Alabama Crimson Tide football. After years, decades even, of assuming that Alabama would beat anyone, anytime, anywhere, the Tide are just 9-5 since the start of the 2024 season. They've lost their last two games, a 19-13 defeat to the Michigan Wolverines in the ReliaQuest Bowl, and a 31-17 beatdown by the Florida State Seminoles in their opening game of the 2025 season.
As Thomas Castellanos so eloquently said in the offseason, Nick Saban isn't walking through the door to save them.
So what’s behind Alabama’s slide in the post-Saban era under Kalen DeBoer? DeBoer, after all, arrived in Tuscaloosa after a phenomenal run as Washington’s head coach. He went 25-3, won the Alamo Bowl, posted an undefeated regular season with a Pac-12 title game win over Oregon in 2024, reached the national championship game, and put together a 21-game winning streak. And that was at Washington, a program not on Alabama’s level. Yet he has already lost more games in 14 tries at Alabama than he did in 28 at UW. What’s happening?
Former Tide quarterback A.J. McCarron thinks NIL budgets (name, image and likeness) are to blame.
Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer. Photo: Melina Myers-Imagn Images
Does Alabama Have An NIL Budget Problem?
On a recent episode of the McReady and Siskey podcast, McCarron spoke about the issues he sees with Bama's NIL budget.
"You look at these other teams that have $40-50 million in NIL," McCarron said. "Alabama – and I know this for a fact, talking to multiple people in the program – Alabama has less than $20 million in their NIL."
Assuming that’s true, it still doesn’t fully explain the results, because Alabama recruiting has remained elite. In 2024, the Crimson Tide ranked No. 2 in the 247 Composite, No. 2 in the On3 Industry rankings and No. 1 at Rivals. ESPN also ranked them No. 2. For 2025, Bama ranked No. 3 at 247 and On3 and No. 4 at Rivals. Eight five-star recruits have committed over the last two signing periods. So if their NIL budget is less than half of other schools’, it hasn’t dented their ability to recruit at an elite level—even in the post-Saban era.
That’s the broader issue. In the pre-NIL world, programs like Bama dominated because they offered advantages other schools couldn’t match. That meant the chance to compete for national championships, a pipeline to the NFL, a track record of sustained success—maybe even, in some cases, some, uh, financial incentives.
Saban saw the writing on the wall that NIL would make sustained success tougher and add a new layer of difficulty with player retention. Under Saban, Bama had elite talent and the best coach in college football history—one who maximized players, built an unmatched culture and dominated schematically.
DeBoer, for all his success, isn’t Saban. Yes, NIL has narrowed the gap between Bama and everyone else. But blaming NIL entirely misses the forest for the trees; all those advantages they once enjoyed are gone. They aren’t coming back.