Q&A: Alabama AD Greg Byrne on NIL, Playoff Expansion and Energizer Bunny Nick Saban

Crimson Tide athletic director covered a lot of ground, from amateurism to the evolution of college sports during an interview on the Jay Barker Radio Show.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Last year, University of Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne had to deal with a pandemic, which led to sports being shut down and a huge financial shortfall for his department. 

This year there's the new transfers rules, expansion of the college football playoff, name image and likeness changes, and the Supreme Court basically ending amateurism as we know it. All happening simultaneously. 

Oh, and the coronavirus is still around.

Moreover, Byrne recently extended Nick Saban's contract, again, and is trying to move forward with a massive facilities upgrade that finished the first of three phases last year.

He touched upon dealing with all during a segment of the Jay Barker Radio Show on Thursday, with the former quarterback, author and former Sports Illustrated writer Lars Anderson and myself asking the questions. 

Let's start which what happened Monday with the 9-0 Supreme Court decision and Justice Brett Kavanaugh had some thoughts on it as well with his [opinion] from an athlete director standpoint did you like the ruling? Was it something that you feel like is heading in the right direction? Just give us your thoughts about it.

Well, it was a bit of a surprise, you just didn't know when it would be coming out. I think what the argument has been from the NCAA side was that college athletics is unique. I have a picture here right above my desk that has representation of all 21 of our teams and 19 of them, really, either generate little or no revenue, and a couple of them do generate revenue, and there's opportunities that are given to a lot of people throughout, and that has not been perfect. But if you're in the walls of an  intercollegiate athletic department, there's a lot of good things that happen on a regular basis. 

So I think there was a bit of an argument, I'm not saying I agree with it completely, but there is an argument that amateurism wishes a different approach than most of the things you would have, and the supreme court felt differently. And we know now what the new reality is. And so we have to continue to evolve with that. Jay, you know from your time as a student athlete here at Alabama it's evolved a lot during that time. When you were here you didn't have unlimited fields. Just the medical and academic support, I'm not saying it wasn't here before, it was, but that's continued to  evolve in a very significant and positive manner. How we forecast attendance, what happens there now, we are already embracing the name image, image and likeness [which] may be slower than what some people would like but still another positive step to make sure we're supporting our student-athletes. So I think there was a different view of some of that, and it is what it is. Like just like everything else I just talked about there we have to evolve with this and I'm confident that we will.

The governors of 19 states have already signed bills into law for name image and likeness in six states, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and New Mexico. These laws will go into effect July 1, I think, so it's 12 days. One, how do you feel about this, and two, how is this going to be managed by the school, or are you still sort of figuring out the logistics?

It's something that we are ... we have a plan that we've been actually working on for over a year. And so we're ready to go, we're educating our student-athletes, we're educating our coaches and staff. It's very clear in the law that's not something we can arrange as as an athletic department or staff member. We have to let the market kind of drive what is what is out there. It can't be a recruiting inducement. We're educating what they can and can't do, but there will be opportunity and I think that's good for the student-athletes. We all know anytime you start something fresh like this is, there will be things that you haven't thought about in advance that we'll have to adjust to. But I can tell you we as partners spend a lot of time with the group we partnered with, a group that's going to help us with an educational tool, and a reporting tool that we can use on kids' phones. 

But, you know, I do think because of what the University of Alabama represents, in the interest in our program. I think we're going to be as positioned as well as any program for the young people to have opportunities to potentially make some revenue off  their marketing rights, off their name and image likeness. I know the argument for a long time was, well, when the Olympics changed their model, there was a lot of 'Well if the Olympics can do it, college athletics can do it.' Well the argument back off it was there's not recruiting in Olympics. Right? If you're an American Olympian and fortunate enough to make that, there's not a recruiting process, there's competition there that you're dealing with that's reality. And so I think in time, you'll see schools that because of the interests of their marketplace that they have, they'll have some opportunities that some other schools won't. Obviously we're confident because of the interest in the University of Alabama that there will be some student-athletes who  will certainly have some opportunities to better themselves from the name image and likeness process.

Going back to mentioning the evolution of college athletics, I don't think anyone ever envisioned all this happening at once but in your mind, is that the biggest change that's going on right now and the thing that's got your attention to most is name image and likeness, or is it the playoff or what exactly is it?

Part of what I love about what I get to do Chris is that no two days are alike, there's a variety of what you deal with, and obviously in my role I can't be too deep on any one subject because there's so many subjects that we deal with, whether we have 600 student-athletes and they have 350 employees, and all the different groups that are involved with college athletics. I think, I think there's things we're going to talk about the college football playoff, and I do think that the current model has worked very well for Alabama and we need to make sure we recognize that as far as what, what happens here in the future. 

I also know that I don't control the college football playoff from my chair, I'm just one voice in the room. But we obviously care very much about the importance of it for a program so we got to be involved with name image and likeness, [which] is a reality that we're spending a lot of time and effort as a department on right now trying to manage and make sure we're doing it the right way, and doing the best we can to give our, our young people, make sure they're on the same level playing field as everybody else.

You know I, I read Judge Kavanaugh's comments the other day, and, and it took a little while to sink in. I'm going to continue to watch that and see what continues to evolve with that but we are, we are in a major evolution of college athletics. I think some of it is certainly good and justified. I try to be very open-minded about it because while you can fight it all you want, at the end of the day you still have to deal with reality.

But I also think we as an enterprise of college sports have not done a good enough job talking about how we do invest in the young people in our programs academically, athletically, socially, mental health, a lot of different ways and trying to do our very best to give them opportunity to prepare them for the rest of their lives. Those are real dollars. I saw in an article that if you're counting dollars and salaries and you're at Alabama out of state, and you count everything that we do from an investment standpoint on the student-athletes, it's about $147,000 a year of real dollars.

I think it's okay to say that, and when I say that I'd say that constructively and I'm glad that we do, but I think we probably as an industry have done a very good job of talking more openly about some of those things, and when I began when I said, it's 100 percent constructive and there's a lot of good that takes place around. You guys are around and you see what happens within the walls of college athletics and there's so much good. And I do think it's important that we don't lose focus on that as, as this continues to evolve.

Forbes did a study last April 2020, and it came out and said college sports was generating running $8.5 billion, and only 7 percent of that 8.5 billion was going towards scholarships and stipends to the athletes. They said that 58 percent of it was men's basketball and football, generating that income, the rest was the others, and just went into the whole argument about NBA and NFL and how they, how they share that. I don't agree that that should be done that way, but 7 percent seemed really, really low. Is that the real number? Where's the money go?

Yeah, I can't speak across all of college athletics but no. As far as a percentage, I can't tell you. I can't tell you exactly what ours are, but when I, when I drew that dollar figure out of our investment to young people in our program I do think those are real dollars and we make sure we invest. And at the same time, too, I'm also proud of the way we've evolved and will continue to evolve, and making sure that — I think one of the things that college sports that maybe doesn't get recognized as well as it should, is ... when I got into college athletics. My dad was a in Nebraska at the time, and the finances were different then. What I saw, Jay I wasn't as good an athlete as you were, I was a great athlete in my own mind and unfortunately few others thought the same way.

But I do believe in the opportunity to come about with college sports. And I do believe that we're one of the things that brings people together and a lot from a lot of different backgrounds and interests, socioeconomic status, all those different things and we all come together for the Alabama Crimson Tide, and it's something that's across the country, whether it's the Washington State Cougars or the Maine Black Bears. It's from one end of the country to the other. And seeing that competition, and people develop, and those are all things that very much interested me and why I wanted to be a part of sports. I was so fortunate. Part of why I held Alabama at such high regard from my youngest days that I started watching sports, because I saw them doing it at the level that few others were. What an honor it is to be a part of that. But I, I saw this as an industry that did give a lot of opportunities and a lot of different people, and it continued to change as television has changed. There's no doubt about it.

But at the same time, I do think the great majority of coaches and the people that are involved with it see that opportunity as a positive thing. We probably didn't evolve as well as we should have. But we have been evolving pretty dramatically like y'all just said, especially in the last decade. And I think that evolution is going to continue.

I asked that number because I really felt like that was not dishonest, I felt like that number was not good, based on just scholarships and stipends. You look around college football, especially Power 5, I mean these places are Taj Mahals now, I mean they are the best of the best dining facilities, the best of the best science and health and fitness and training and everything that goes in to feel like that sharing was done to further the athletes' career to help them after anything with football in college or the NFL, so I totally agree with you on that.

Let me jump in on that. I think that what you were talking about, there's a reason why guys in the NFL like to come back and train here. Because your weight room, nutrition, training room, medical — and we do a lot to support them from a medical standpoint as well, even after they're done — and it's because of their experiences they had at the University of Alabama, and it's not unique to the University of Alabama, it's a lot of other places too.  It's a hell of a great place, excuse my language there, just to continue to give you the best opportunity to develop you in every aspect of your life and that's what we spend our resources trying to do.

We need to ask you about Coach Saban's new contract. How important was it to get that extension done, and also, the NFL has some new COVID protocols. Do you have any idea if colleges will follow those same COVID protocols?

Ok, as far as Coach Saban's contract obviously he and Miss Terry both, you can't put a price tag on the value that they have brought to our university and our community and to our students in the game of football. Obviously, we want to make sure we do everything we can as long as coach physically and mentally wants to keep coaching. You look at him, I mean, he's just the Energizer Bunny, he just keeps going in the energy level of commitment. Boots on the ground. My office overlooks the football practice field. Just the other day we had a camp going on, he's out there in the middle of it with a straw hat on, with all the campers, coaching like he's one of the youngest assistants trying to make a mark, and learn and grow. His energy level is outstanding.  So we're really glad to be able to come to another agreement, and extend him out. We're very proud of that, and looking forward to many more good years ahead.

From a COVID protocol standpoint, we're still working through that as a university.  Obviously we have to stay within the guidelines of what university does. I know some private institutions have required vaccinations. The only public one that I've seen so far is the University of Illinois, I believe, is going to require that. I don't see that as something that's going to happen. We try to educate, encourage, we spent a lot of time on our student-athletes bringing in medical experts to talk about the vaccine, and why they personally as medical folks have chosen to take it, why they think other people should too. I know Coach [Saban] did a PSA and I've talked openly about it. Regina and I and our boys, we've all been vaccinated and very glad that we did. I had COVID and it kicked my butt.

It's something that if I can avoid going through that again I certainly want to. As much as anything I want to make sure I don't get anybody else sick, because, you know, a lot of people will have had very little reaction when they got COVID and others have passed away. So it's all over the yard. With that, we saw the vaccine as something that gives us the best opportunity to get back to normal, and I feel like we're making a lot of good progress with that which is encouraging to see. You know, obviously we filled up Rhoads Stadium in softball at the end of the season. I was in Oklahoma City, full crowds, and you see that in Omaha [for the College World Series]. We certainly have every intention of doing that in the fall at Bryant-Denny [Stadium] and in all of our other venues.