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Did Alabama's Nick Saban get a paycut? Not exactly.

Steve Berkowitz
USA TODAY Sports

Alabama won college football’s national championship last season, yet it seems that coach Nick Saban is making less money this season than he did a year ago.

Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban.

How is that possible?

The NCAA’s member schools helped make some of his income disappear.

Last spring, through a combination of action and inaction, their representatives on Division I’s top governing bodies rescinded a longstanding rule requiring nearly all athletics department employees’ annual disclosure of income and benefits received from sources outside the school.

USA TODAY Sports college football coaches salary database

The self-reported document, which had to be provided to the president or chancellor — not the NCAA — was designed to let campus officials monitor what non-university entities or individuals were paying or giving employees based on their status with the school’s sports program.

As part of its annual surveys of coaches’ compensation, USA TODAY Sports has been acquiring these documents through open-records requests, reporting the amounts and including them in the coaches’ total pay. In many instances, the amounts reported have been $0 or relatively modest sums from camps, clinics or personal appearances. However, with Saban and a number of other high-profile football and men’s basketball coaches, the amounts have routinely totaled more than $100,000 — in a few cases, much more.

Under legislation sponsored by the Big 12 Conference, the employees’ reporting requirement was replaced through the modification of another rule that now says staffers can receive money or goods from non-school sources as long that happens in a manner “consistent with the institution’s policy related to outside income and benefits.”

The changes were approved by the Division I Council last spring, then became final when the Division I Board of Directors took no further action on them.

As with all NCAA legislative proposals, its publication last year was accompanied the sponsor’s rationale: “The proposal is significant to the membership in that it will reduce hours expended on collecting information most often duplicated because of existing institutional procedures and would allow administrative staff to focus their efforts on nationally significant issues and student-athlete well-being issues.”

Hiring a college football coach is expensive. Firing one is, too.

The change took effect Aug. 1, so when USA TODAY Sports this spring asked schools for football coaches’ most recently available outside-income reports, dozens of schools provided reports collected in 2016 or 2015, allowing publication of those figures. Officials at some of those schools said they were uncertain about whether they will continue collecting the reports, though officials at Ohio State and South Carolina say they plan to do so.

Nine schools, including Alabama, said they already had stopped collecting the reports so they had no documents responsive to the request. Saban had reported at least $150,000 on each of his past five outside-income forms.

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