Tommy Tuberville used to be a college football coach, leading the Ole Miss Rebels, Auburn Tigers, Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Cincinnati Bearcats over a 19-year head coaching career. Now, he’s a United States senator for the state of Alabama, but he’s still making headlines in the college football world with his recent proposal.
Tuberville is partnering with fellow senator Joe Manchin – a former Division I college football player – to draft a bipartisan bill that would help regulate the name, image, and likeness rule across college football, something Tuberville says is much needed, based on what he hears from his friends still in the coaching industry.
“I’ve talked to all my [coaching] buddies. They’ve never seen anything like it,” Tuberville told Sports Illustrated. “When you don’t have guidelines and direction, no matter what you are doing, you are lost. They are all lost right now.”
Currently, NIL is unregulated on the federal level with laws varying slightly from state to state. Tuberville and Manchin want to change that, creating uniform regulation across all of college football.
“The goal here is to make an even playing field. We want to try to make it as fair in each state so everybody will have an equal opportunity,” Tuberville told SI. “There’s got to be some rules. Right now, everybody is doing something different. There’s a lot of money being paid. But this is not about the money. I’ve always been for the student-athletes making money. But this is about giving everybody the opportunity on the college level, no matter what university, to feel like you’ve got an opportunity to compete.”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, and Alabama head coach Nick Saban about the potential NIL legislation, according to SI.
