House Settlement Lawyer Steve Berman Attacks Donald Trump, Nick Saban For NIL Executive Order Conversation

The college athletics world is currently awaiting a judge in California to rule on the House settlement that will change the way athletes are paid in this new era of NIL. But, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in their case against the NCAA has come out against Donald Trump and Nick Saban for their recent comments in the ‘eleventh hour’ on an executive order needed to fix NIL. 

Last week, President Donald Trump gave the commencement speech at Alabama to kickoff graduation weekend, with Nick Saban acting as the ‘warm up’ act inside Coleman Coliseum. 

One of the topics that came from the Saban and Trump meeting in Tuscaloosa centered around a potential executive order that the President could sign that would work to neutralize some of the problems with the current state of athletics, with schools preparing to pay athletes, when the House settlement is approved. 

Donald Trump Considering An Executive Order On NIL After Meeting With Nick Saban. Would It Work?

This led to Donald Trump saying that he would have folks inside his administration look at ways he could come up with some type of executive order that would mitigate some of the problems with college athletics. 

‘House’ Attorney Goes After Nick Saban, Donald Trump

For Steve Berman, who is the co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in their fight against the NCAA in the House settlement case, he has made it clear that Nick Saban doesn’t need to be sticking his nose into a subject that made him tens of millions of dollars. 

"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.’ 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," said firm managing partner and co-founder, Steve Berman, who serves as court-appointed co-lead counsel in the litigation. 

"Coach Saban and Trump’s eleventh-hour talks of executive orders and other meddling are just more unneeded self-involvement," Berman said. "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."

I think it's fair to say that attorney Steve Berman is not a fan of Nick Saban, along with the President, trying to act like the savior of what's currently on the horizon in college athletics.