Nick Saban had his turn at the microphone during Tuesday’s SEC Media Days session, and as usual, everyone in attendance was anxious to hear what the Alabama head coach had to say.

Saban has provided plenty of comments regarding NIL since its rollout, and that theme continued on Tuesday. He stated that Crimson Tide football players totaled over $3 million in deals last year while calling such opportunities “a great thing for players”. At the same time, he’s been one of the primary voices seeking guidelines to ensure such deals are being executed properly.

“We matured personally, we got an education, we developed a career by graduating. In lots of cases, guys had an opportunity to play at the next level, whether they played baseball, football, basketball, didn’t matter,” he said in an interview with 247Sports’ Josh Pate. “So college was about developing, ‘where can I create the most value for my future’. But it’s going to be about ‘who can pay me the most money?'”

Saban expressed that while there’s nothing wrong with players pursuing NIL deals, he’s staunchly against college coaches using those avenues to gain a recruiting advantage. In May, he famously accused Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher of “(buying) every player on (his) team” during the Aggies’ most recent recruiting cycle, which Fisher vehemently denied.

“When you use that in recruiting, then it becomes, ‘I’m just going to go where I can get the best deal’, rather than focus on ‘where can I go and create the most value for my future’, and that’s the part that is very concerning, I think, to me, in terms of competitive balance,” he said.