Nick Saban was part of an advertising campaign when Alabama launched its “Yea Alabama” school-sponsored NIL entity last month, but the Tide’s coach expressed reservations this week about how that entity is being used.

“My issue is, we have a collective where we raise money as an institution to create these things where basically we’re paying the guy to play,” Saban told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith in his “Know Mercy” podcast published Wednesday.

Saban reiterated that he supports players’ rights to earn revenue from their name, image and likenesses but continued to express concern about how NIL can be used in recruiting.

“It wasn’t supposed to be me going to give a speech to raise money from alumni so we can get enough money in our collective so can pay players,” he told Smith. “That’s not what it was supposed to be.”

Saban said “coaches” are to blame for the current system, and explained he would prefer an NFL-style system instead where players are employees and sign contracts with a particular team.

“If want to change the model of college football and follow the NFL model, what I would like to see if that’s the case, is we pay the players — everybody’s got a part of their scholarship that gives them so much money,” he said. “But now you’re talking about making college student-athletes employees, and that in and of itself may have some issues that would have to be resolved. So you’re talking about a similar model to the NFL where you’ve got to get some sort of legal right to be able to do this.”

There are several court cases through the United States legal system that are challenging existing norms in college sports that prevent athletes from becoming employees. Perhaps the most prominent is Johnson v. NCAA, a case in which the SEC filed an amicus brief last year arguing that college players should not be considered employees.

Saban, though, believes there would be benefits.

“I would much rather see us adopt the NFL model than be where we are right now,” he said. “Pay the players, and they can become employees, which a lot of people in college — that’s not what college football or amateur sports are supposed to be — but I would rather see that than be where we are now, where nobody has a contract, you can leave whenever you’re want, and we can actually create an institution that can pay you to play for our school. I asked the question then and I’ll ask you now: is that what we want college football to become?”

Saban also expressed concern about the lack of licensing for agents and representatives of college players for NIL dealings, saying he recommends all of his players get an agent but some are not qualified for the job.

“My issue is agents in the NFL are licensed, they’re qualified, they’re regulated by the NFLPA,” he said. “You’ve got none of that in college. You can have any guy on the street calling people, telling them they should do this or that.”

Smith brought up Saban’s well-circulated comments last May about Texas A&M and Jimbo Fisher, and Saban continued to stand behind elements of what he said.

“I was not saying anybody was doing anything wrong,” he said. “But question was, is this what we want college football to become? And that’s what it’s become. So did I not tell the truth?

“I shouldn’t have singled anyone out. I said that. But that’s what it’s become. Now we have guys making all this money going to different schools. Maybe that’s all good. If that’s what we want college football to be, the best teams are going to be the teams that have the most money to spend.”

Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.