Unprecedented Situation

Trying to compare what is happening at Alabama with anything else, anytime else, is a fool’s game.

You can rank coaches 1 to whatever but there can be only one GOAT. Coach Saban is the GOAT. Downs and Sayin would never have been in Tuscaloosa were it not for Coach Saban. They didn’t sign with Kiffin or Smart or Sark or …. they came because of Nick. It’s no big surprise that without Coach Saban there is no reason for them to stay.

If current NIL and portal rules had been in effect when Coach Bryant retired how many recruits/players would have left the team? Dunno, but maybe a lot. They came to Bama to play for the GOAT.

I hate hate hate losing Downs and Sayin. I do. But I am a big fan of CKD and love the staff that he is putting together. For the long term, the best possible staff is more important that whatever players take this opportunity to leave.

Sunshine pumper? Maybe. But my first memories of Alabama football include Joe Namath so I’ve been a fan for a long time. The staff that CKD is putting together might be the best we’ve had in a long time.

Coach Saban was perhaps the best recruiter in the history of college football and that will certainly be missed. Recruiting, however, isn’t as important now as it was even a few years ago. The ease with which a heavily recruited player, on which a university spends so much time, effort and money, can move to any other team and the fact that each player is actually an item up for auction negates a lot of the need for the recruitment and development of high school kids.

I do not like the portal as it now exists and preferred the restrictions on transfers of the past. I don’t like the NIL in its current form. I don’t like a lot of things about the state and future of college football. Aight? But it is what it is.

I’ve always believed that any other team could do or be anything they wanted but that at the end of the day we are still the Crimson Tide of Alabama and they ain’t. Still feel that way.

TL/dr: Roll Motherfricking Tide.