Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM AUGUST 2024 5 W hat do Jeff Jackson and Nick Saban have in common? To the dismay of diehard Notre Dame hockey fans, it's not recent national championships. Saban won six at Alabama and seven in total as a college football head coach. Jack- son has two to his legendary NCAA hockey name but none at Notre Dame. Both came at Lake Superior State in the 1990s. Jackson has only one more try at what's eluded him for 20 years. He's stepping away on his own terms after 20 seasons in South Bend — just like Saban did after 17 in Tuscaloosa. So, about those similarities; they clearly resemble each other in longevity. But it's also in the way the two greatest head coaches at the respective programs they're leaving behind — perennial powerhouses of their own creation — exited stage left. Emphasis on stage left. Orderly egress. It was time. When Saban, 72, stepped down in January, you'd be naïve to say you were surprised — even though his Crimson Tide came as close to any team all year at knocking off eventual national cham- pion Michigan. The Wolverines won, 27-20, in overtime of the College Foot- ball Playoff semifinals in the Rose Bowl. And when Notre Dame announced on June 24 that Jackson's final season in charge of Irish hockey will be the up- coming one, it also seemed to confirm what was only a matter of time. Take it from the men themselves. They were over the environment envel- oping them. "What we have now is not college football," Saban told ESPN in February. "Not college football as we know it. You hear somebody use the word 'student- athlete.' That doesn't exist." Jackson, 69, agreed. He called college athletics "a mess." "Notre Dame doesn't feel this way, but when I read somewhere they don't want us using the terminology 'stu- dent-athlete' anymore, I find that em- barrassing. That's not what college ath- letics is meant to be." Not what it was meant to be, perhaps. What it is, however? One-hundred per- cent, for better or worse. The reality is that the landscape could continue distancing itself from what it once was before it finds solid foot- ing. Collegiate athletics have never had more moving pieces — name, image and likeness, conference realignment and the monetary consequences at the in- dividual, program and nationwide level that come with those two hot-button issues in particular — than right now. They're not going to quit shifting overnight. And if you aren't comfortable dealing with those affairs, you might as well leave the game — even if you're the most successful college football coach of all time or the active Division I leader in NCAA hockey wins by a head coach. When Saban won his first national championship at Alabama in the 2009 season, there were still 12 teams in the SEC. His players who hoisted the BCS crystal ball were amateur athletes. The SEC will have 16 teams in 2024, and the number of players on those star- studded rosters who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on one of the conference's uniforms might be in the hundreds. Some of them are even mak- ing seven figures and rolling around cam- puses in Lamborghinis. Jackson's 1992 Lake Superior State Lakers wouldn't have ever dreamt of such substantiality. It is all off-putting for a pair of coaches in Saban and Jackson who started their coaching careers in times when student-athletes — yes, student- athletes — were excited about meal sti- pends or money for books and board. Don't get them wrong; they both be- lieve college athletes should be paid what they're worth. They support NIL in its purest form. As the sports they coached grew in popularity and started making the schools they represented mega mil- lions through broadcasting, it was only right for shares of that revenue to get into the hands of the people most responsible for the product — the players. Saban and Jackson are too wise to deny that. They'd probably even admit it took too long. But they've also seen too many for- mer pupils happily play for pride and not a paycheck to continue working in the current climate, one in which the transfer portal and dollar signs make it as easy as ever to suit up at one place one year and at another the next. "Everything is cutthroat," Jackson said. "Stealing everybody's players and recruits. It's just not what it used to be, and it's disappointing." It is what it is, though, so universi- ties must find successful, eager younger coaches like Kalen DeBoer, 49, who willed Washington to a CFP appearance last sea- son in an era that rewards schools with way more money than the Huskies have in their kitty. Or Marcus Freeman, 38, who somehow has Notre Dame recruiting at one of its highest levels ever despite no- toriously not being as unthrifty in the NIL space as, say, many SEC schools. Notre Dame is replacing Jackson with a 40-year-old who's never been a col- lege head coach in Irish alum Brock Sheahan, for instance. He's got a long way to go to earn Jackson's name recog- nition, but he possesses the passion to try. Sad as it may be, legends are step- ping down sooner than they thought they might've because of the state of the current college sports environment. You've either got the energy to put up with it or you don't. "I am a little concerned about the di- rection of college athletics," Jackson said. "There's not much I can do about it." ✦ GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com Jackson is stepping away from the Irish at the conclusion of the 2024-25 season after 20 years at the helm of the hockey program. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME ATHLETICS Jeff Jackson Stepping Down Evokes Nick Saban