Alabama Crimson Tide's Nick Saban says megaconferences will create college football 'caste system'

ATLANTA — Alabama coach Nick Saban on Tuesday said that megaconferences «may be something that we all have to deal with in the future.»

Last month, USC and UCLA agreed to leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. A year ago, Texas and Oklahoma announced that they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC.

Saban said that he believes realignment is being driven by money — and might not be in the best interest of college football as a whole.

«Megaconferences will create more of a caste system, maybe, in college football, and everyone has to decide if that's the direction we really want to go or not,» Saban told ESPN's Get Up on Tuesday.

Whether that's good or bad depends on who you are.

«At Alabama, we're one of the haves,» Saban said. «It's probably a good thing. For some of the have-nots… maybe it won't work out as well.»

One of the biggest drivers of that imbalance is players' ability to make money from name, image and likeness deals. While he favors players being able to make money, Saban has pointed out the unintended consequence of collectives using promises of NIL earnings to entice recruits to certain schools.

He ignited a war of words earlier in the offseason when he said that Texas A&M's «bought every player» in its top-ranked signing class. Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher took offense to those comments, holding a hastily set-up news conference the following day in which he called what Saban said «despicable» and insisted, «we never bought anybody,» and «no rules are broken.»

Saban said he shouldn't have singled out Fisher and that the two were able to speak at SEC spring meetings in May. At SEC media days, Saban on Tuesday said he had «no issues» with Fisher and that he took his words to heart, but the Tide coach again addressed