- Alabama dropped to No. 15 in the AP rankings after their second loss of this year
- QB Jalen Milroe and WR Ryan Williams are among the top NIL earners
Former Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron has blasted his Alma mater following their second loss of the season last weekend, as he accused players on the team of being overly concerned with social media and NIL deals.
The college landscape has shifted drastically since McCarron departed the Crimson Tide following the 2013 season, with players now able to cash in off of their name, image and likeness.
And while speaking on the ‘McCready & Siskey’ podcast, McCarron claimed that players were ‘worried about f*****g TikTok… for their personal self and personal gain, and how much money they can get from NIL.
‘We just didn’t have that s*** back then,’ he continued, via Fox News. ‘It was a team sport. You came together as a team because you had one common goal, because you knew that’s how you were going to make your money, was by winning.
McCarron certainly did plenty of that in college, as he helped lead Alabama to national championships during the 2011 and 2012 seasons.
However, the typically-elite program has struggled a bit since the retirement of Nick Saban, as the Crimson Tide fell to No. 15 in the most recent AP poll after losing to Tennessee.
Per On3.com’s NIL rankings, Alabama has two of the 10 most valuable college football players in the country on their roster in quarterback Jalen Milroe (No. 4) and wide receiver Ryan Williams (No. 9).
Williams has over 384,000 TikTok followers and McCarron evidently thinks the platform can be a distraction.
‘Winning attracts people to that program, it attracts scouts, it attracts GMs, it attracts ownership to allow yourself that opportunity to go make yourself a lot of money and change your family tree for a long period of time,’ the ex-Alabama star, who played 19 games in the NFL, continued.
‘You can just tell. It’s not the same. I would think Bama fans should get used to that in a way of, hey, it’s not gonna be what you knew from 2008 up until last year, where there was just a certain standard. That’s not a knock on the coaching staff or a knock on anybody.
‘It’s just a different era. I think it’s something that they’re going to have to buckle up if they’re not ready for it.’
Alabama – now led by head coach Kalen DeBoer – will take on Missouri this weekend.
