McElroy admits this morning on Jox that the Bama bump in recruiting rankings was real....

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McElroy admits this morning on Jox that the Bama bump in recruiting rankings was real

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The 24/7 staffers have long admitted this.

They have described rankings as how the kids will do at NFL level rather than college.

It's stupid

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Recruiting services bumped the Bama guys up to sell subscriptions.

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This was obvious. Saban is the greatest to ever do it. Why wouldn't they bump recruits he was interested in?

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McElroy admits this morning on Jox that the Bama bump in recruiting rankings was real....

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So real in fact that every single recruiting class that signed with Saban won at least one national championship.

This is such a dumb take, especially when the results are staring you right in the face. The man averaged over 12 wins a season on his way to 206 on the field victories, six national championships, and nine Southeastern Conference championships. But sure. Those recruiting classes weren't as good as advertised and only bumped up to sell subscriptions.

So which is it then? Saban only won games and championships because he had loaded rosters or recruiting services lied and Saban won games and championships because he was that good of a coach and coached up inferior talent?

I remember when people used to complain about the Braves getting the benefit of the strike zone. I think part of it was that Glavine and Maddux were so good at painting the corners that if they threw it and it was close, the umpires assumed it was a strike because they threw it. At the same time, Chipper Jones had a such a good eye that if it was close and he didn’t swing, the umpire assumed that it must have been a ball.

I think by the same token, if a player has been somewhat overlooked and Saban thought he was good enough to play at Alabama, then the recruiting services thought that he must actually be a 4/5-star player.

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Recruiting services bumped the Bama guys up to sell subscriptions. Doesn't see any reason why Deboer can't do even better at Bama as he's done it with much less.

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I think most reasonable people thought this. If you run a for profit recruiting website and your market is skewed heavily to certain fanbases, you are gonna cater to those fanbases. That said, the rankings as a whole do seem to correlate with on field performance

In college I worked a gopher boy hourly position in the AD at Bama but I could occasionally see emails from coaches. I was shocked the amount of back forth amongst the coaches and the very recognizable people from Rivals and Scout

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I would say that in his prime years, he coached up the talent.

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So it is your assertion that it was just a coincidence that four and five star players like Rolando McClain, Dont'a Hightower, Mark Ingram II, Trent Richardson, Julio Jones, etc. dominated the SEC during their time at Alabama?

I guess the fact that Alabama has more NFL players than any other team is just a coincidence.

And yes, I realize another coach won't recruit as well as Saban did, but that's not the point nor the contention of this topic.

Roll Damn Tide !!! But in all seriousness Bama is going to have such stiff recruiting challenges now. Such a level playing field going forward. Past years of college football for every team is not indicative of future. Every time has resources , cash , nil , ambitious boosters etc. Just think how many boosters in the SEC saw Bama stomp their team year after year. Now you can openly pay players and Saban is gone.

Also completely unrelated but First Take is going to be wild this morning lol. RIP cowboys and Dak.