Leadership of the Alabama football program is not the only change Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne has navigated in the past year.
Byrne, who has been AD since 2017, continues to navigate a new collegiate athletics landscape with the pending settlement of the House vs. NCAA lawsuit and the introduction of revenue sharing paired with athletes being able to cash in on Name, Image and Likeness deals.
Byrne spoke with the Tuscaloosa News to tackle a handful of topics ranging from the settlement and NIL to the current state of Alabama athletics.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Greg Byrne:He's been great. You know, we usually talk once or twice a week, and he and Kalen (DeBoer) have developed a good relationship. So obviously when you have somebody like him as a resource, that's a strength for us, and we've been very fortunate.
Byrne:No, it's absolutely all-encompassing. I mean, our industry is going through tremendous change right now because of the House litigation settlement and everything that is going on with that. He's obviously been to Washington , D.C., a few times. I've been with him on those trips. He's not only greatly respected as a football coach, but he's greatly respected as a leader and a person that cares about college athletics collectively.
Byrne:The question will be whether there will be guidelines within the Southeastern Conference or whether it'll be an institutional decision. I do think there will be value that we're playing on a similar playing field when it comes to scholarships. That still is yet to be determined. But just like everything else, the mentality out there is that, "They have the money, they can do it." And I've said this many times … I haven't found the secret gold bars under Coleman Coliseum or Mal Moore (Athletic Facility). We have a budget we have to manage. And then we have a new, potential rev share model coming through that will probably add $20-to-25 million at a minimum to our budget annually. That's a lot of money. What I am hopeful for is we can have a model that gives us the opportunity to have strong, broad-based programming and the ability to be competitive from a revenue-sharing standpoint and give as many young people as possible the opportunity to go to school and compete as a college athlete. But I told our coaches it's going to look different.
Byrne:If and when the settlement is finalized, it will at least give us some perimeters that we know what the new world is. And then, as you can imagine, from a coach's standpoint, they all want to know how that impacts their sport and their young people in their program.
Byrne:I think we're one of the leaders. I think the brand of the University of Alabama is as strong of a brand as there is in the country. All you have to do is look to see just the growth in our enrollment from all over the country, all over the world. It's a national and, a lot of times, international brand. … When we play a football game on television, our numbers are as strong as anybody's in the country. People pay attention to what we're doing. At the same time, too … we just can't go pay top-of-market at every single head coach, every position, everything that we do. We have to manage our resources. And that's becoming more and more challenging. … But I do think when you think of college athletics, I think we're one of the first universities that comes to mind.
Byrne:It's obviously a competitive market in the elite coaching world. And we're fortunate. We have two elite coaches in those two positions. … When we hired Nate (Oats), he was (in his first season) last or second-to-last in the league (actually ninth). And I told him when I hired him ... "You do well on the court, you'll do well personally." And we backed that up. You have to continue to monitor the market. We have done that. And Nate has shown that, through his actions, he wants to be here, and we're very pleased about that.
Kalen went from coaching in the national championship game on a Monday and being out head coach on Friday. And, as you can imagine, he wasn't going to leave the University of Washington for really hardly any place at all. Except for Alabama. … We have to make sure we stay competitive because of the impact those two sports make on everything else that we do.
Byrne:You try to explain that. But until you go live it, it's challenging. I worked at Kentucky , I worked at Mississippi State . Regina (Byrne's wife) used to come to Tuscaloosa … to got to Target. So I've been here before I became the AD. … I studied Alabama, I'd read books about it. Always greatly admired this place. But it really still took me a few years to grasp it, just the passion and the interest of this university and how fortunate we are to have that.
I remember when we were flying from Buffalo to here … (when) we hired Nate. And I told him, "Every word you say will be dissected. And your moves will be dissected like you've never had before. And that's part of what you're signing up for." It's natural human tendency to say, "Oh yeah, I get it. I get it." But you don't really get it until you experience it. … If you put that script-A on, people are going to pay attention to what you have to say in your sport you're involved in.
Byrne:I'm happy for the opportunities our young people are getting. Obviously we have a stage at Alabama that will allow them to maximize those opportunities because of the following we have. That is what NIL is intended to be. … There's obviously been some positive financial opportunities. There's getting young people to understand the importance of budgeting the money, paying taxes and how that works, and savings, what they choose to invest their dollars in. … The challenge is they already had a lot on their plate, being a college student-athlete. … So making sure that academics and the athletic and the college responsibilities that you have that come along with that don't suffer because of what's happening from an NIL standpoint. But it's reality. So you need to make sure you're dealing with reality.
Byrne:I rarely talk to them about it. If the only thing that matters is the bottom-line dollar, I think that may not be the young person we always want to have in our program. We understand the importance of financial decisions, and we respect that. But we'd also hope that you're having them based on who gives me the best chance to develop who I am, which program has the best track record of that, who's going to look at me holistically not just from the bottom dollar bottom line, but medically, academic support, nutrition, personal development. I think those are all important too because your college years are also a big chunk of your development years for your future. So it needs to be just beyond that one simple thing. Some of them do it only based on finances. I don't have the data to back this up, but I have a theory that the ones who look at it more holistically have the opportunity to have a better experience and development for the future.
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Exclusive Q&A with Alabama AD Greg Byrne: Latest on House vs NCAA, NIL
