ESPN’s “College GameDay” made a push to “save” college sports during Saturday morning’s show.
Everyone from Pat McAfee to Nick Saban to Kirk Herbstreit voiced their support, saying that college sports needs “saving.”
“I’m a big proponent of the Protect College Sports Act. I think it puts some guardrails and gives us an opportunity for leadership that can implement some rules that will control transferring, five years of eligibility, a little bit of control, a cap in terms of how much players can make, which is still a significant amount, which I’m all for. So there’s a lot of good things in this, and I think it’s 80% good, not perfect, but it will help college sports and give us some guidelines of how we move forward in the future,” Saban said.
“I appreciate utilizing your stature as a human to sign up to get into the politics world, which is an absolute nightmare from my understanding, but it’s really our only option at this point,” McAfee said.
“We have nothing really that can be followable, that’s why we need this Protect College Sports Act to pass, even though some people don’t think it’s perfect, it’s voting this week, I think, right? Hey DC, I know you guys just went to recess or something, playing on the monkey bars and all that type of stuff; let’s get to work to save college sports because this is the greatest thing in the world,” he added.
© Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images.
Former ESPN star Mike Ryan, though, was not happy about the segment.
The former producer of “The Dan Le Batard Show” on ESPN sounded off on the “GameDay” segment.
Ryan calls out ‘GameDay’ on social media
Ryan believes that the segment didn’t focus enough on the players.
“Really disappointing “Save College Sports Act” segment on GameDay. Not one dissenting opinion. No one speaking up for labor. Most watching don’t know the obvious conflicts of interests. They did a better job of presenting Saban’s conflict but that was largely dreadful,” he shared.
It’s a complicated time in college sports, even for “College GameDay.”