A.J. McCarron Reveals the True Source of Alabama’s Troubles After Florida State Loss

It’s no secret that Alabama has its problems on the football field, but the true source of its trouble may lie in the school’s spending power.

Former Alabama quarterback and national champion AJ McCarron revealed that his alma mater is ill-equipped to compete in college football’s modern name, image, and likeness (NIL) era.

“You look at these other teams that have $40-50 million in NIL,” McCarron said in an appearance on the McCready & Siskey Podcast. “Alabama—and I know this for a fact, talking to multiple people in the program—Alabama has less than $20 million in their NIL.”

McCarron continued, “You know what helps Alabama from a recruiting standpoint? It’s the fact that Alabama has been Alabama, and people go there because they know you’re going to be able to compete for national championships, year in and year out. And you’re gonna go into the NFL, most likely, if you do what you’re supposed to do.

“If you start losing, all of that goes away. And now you can’t pay guys what other schools are dishing out? Now it hurts you even more. I don’t care who you have as a coach—whether Coach [Nick] Saban, Coach DeBoer, it doesn’t matter.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better summary of the situation confronting Alabama.

College football programs typically recruit based on their reputation for winning, money, or both.  Right now, with Kalen DeBoer only one game into his second year, Alabama has lost four games to unranked opponents. Bama had only lost one game to an unranked opponent in the previous 16 years. So, selling the program based on winning is not happening.

Nor is Alabama able to recruit with money. The school’s alumni are smart people who have done very well for themselves, but there’s no Phil Knight or T. Boone Pickens out there to steal top recruits away from other schools or to pay DeBoer’s enormous contract buyout.

However, as McCarron says, they could fire DeBoer tomorrow, and it still doesn’t change their NIL problem, which is at least as big a problem as the coach. It’s hard to see a way out of this for Alabama.