College sports are going to get a turnover, but not everybody seems to be in agreement with the way things are being handled. A Power 4 official has blasted a high-profile White House meeting on the future of college sports, taking aim at a guest list that included legendary coach Nick Saban but excluded current decision-makers.

“What a farce. Eighty percent of that room was filled with people who have little understanding of how college athletics actually works today,” a Power 4 senior administrator said to Front Office Sports. “Let me know when the White House is ready to bring in the student-athletes, coaches, and administrators who live it every day.”

Current athletic directors and active coaches are the ones wrestling daily with million-dollar rosters and transfer portal chaos. Watching broadcasters, retired legends like Saban, and politicians draft the future of their sport feels like a genuine solution and more like a performative stunt completely disconnected from reality.

In fact, no real-time coaches like Kalen DeBoer, Lane Kiffin, or Dabo Swinney were invited to the meet, as President Trump decided it was better to invite the likes of NCAA president Charlie Baker, NBA commissioner Adam Silver, and Fox Sports president Eric Shanks.

Nick Saban may have pointed out the concern that college football is facing right now. However, the glaring absence of players or current championship-contending coaches only proves the frustrated official’s point. No one can adequately regulate a rapidly evolving, multi-billion-dollar NIL landscape without inviting the exact people currently navigating its immediate legal, financial, and locker room hurdles.

But it’s important to note that the NIL issue is something that many CFB personalities, past and present, have brought up on multiple platforms. Besides Nick Saban, who told Donald Trump about it, fellow veteran coach Urban Meyer has also called out NIL inconsistencies.

Urban Meyer echoes similar sentiments to Nick Saban on NIL issues

Nick Saban and Urban Meyer are considered two of the biggest coaching rivals in the country. Their competitive nature may have seen them disagree on a lot of things in the past, but their opinions regarding NIL appear to be the same. Meyer recently pointed out the flaws in the current NIL system, as he believes that initially, players were working hard to make their own brands and names to earn money, but now they are just focusing on the rat race of earning money.

Now, players are not building their NIL through deals and endorsements but from schools, too, and that is what “cheating” is for him.

“Interest in college football has never been greater, but there is also residual damage being done… Quit calling it NIL; it’s cheating. It’s not NIL. You’re paying guys to play,” Meyer said on College Sports on SiriusXM. “Jeremiah Smith can be a Nike athlete. Get paid absolutely. That’s called the American way. But they have donors throw millions of dollars into a pot and distribute it per Instagram post. That’s called cheating. We’ve got to get a handle on that.”

This issue is creating problems for teams to secure their players, as third-party involvement lures away their players, and tampering is what is creating problems for them. Just like Dabo Swinney had to face with his linebacker Luke Ferrelli, who went straight to Ole Miss. We can only wait and hope that this meeting can lower the chaos surrounding the college football landscape.