Deion Sanders proposed paying College Football Playoff participants for making the tournament and paying larger amounts to players on winning teams to equalize earnings. Sanders and Nick Saban appear together in a new Aflac commercial using current-headline imagery and a recurring duck character. Sanders framed the message with concerns about money and unpredictability and referenced his recovery from bladder cancer and ongoing exercise regimen. Saban returned to television in "retirement" and declined a commissioner role while urging structural oversight of player pay. Recent changes allow schools to pay up to $20.5 million under a House settlement alongside third-party NIL deals.
Sanders and former Alabama coach Nick Saban talked to The Associated Press as part of their unveiling of a new Aflac commercia l that rolls out this week with a storyboard ripped from today's headlines: It opens with Sanders complaining: "This game has gotten out of control. All the money. All the unpredictability." He is talking about health insurance, of course, and the commissioner he wants to see run it isn't Saban, but that kooky duck who wears the same powder-blue sportscoat as the two football legends.
It's an endorsement that Sanders says hits home some two years after his diagnosis with bladder cancer, from which he says he is fully recovered. "I've been walking with my coaches over a mile" after practice, he said ahead of Friday night's season opener against Georgia Tech. "Exercising, lifting." Saban will be back on the set with ESPN in his second year of "retirement" after leaving the Crimson Tide, where he won six national titles.
"I don't want to be in that briar patch of being a commissioner, but I do want to do everything I can to make it right," he said. He and Sanders agreed that there needs to be more structure around deals players sign. Since July 1, schools have been able to start paying up to $20.5 million each to their athletes over the next year under the House settlement alongside third-party NIL deals that have turned some players into millionaires.
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