I’m sure you’ve heard this entire “Saban is the the anti-Christ because he signed more than 25 players” business. There have been a number of people discussing the Brain Cook blog post on AOL FanHouse this past week (Pete Holiday, Roll Bama Roll, Capstone Report, Joe Cribbs Car Wash, Third Saturday in Blogtober, etc.), and honestly I’m just hoping it’ll go away soon so we can focus on other matters.
The issues of whether or not Saban can fit the 30+ recruits, will Saban kick off deserving players, and the medical redshirts are some things that has been tossed around a lot, so I won’t waste your time by crunching numbers until it can be deteremined wether or not it is possbile (honestly, it’s starting to feel like a requirement to talk about this if you are an Alabama blogger. When did the club rules change?!). Brain Cook has another blog titled “MGoBlog“; I suggest you go enjoy the subtle maize & blue goodness of it all.
You have to understand the average Michigan fan’s mindset right now. A year ago, Nick Saban was media enemy #1 when he changed his mind 2 weeks after emphatically stating “I”m not going to be the Alabama coach” (I admit, it wasn’t the proper thing to do. How one over-hyped lie makes you a lifetime liar, I’ll never know). Now, the only coach who is being attacked is Rich Rodriguez for shredding documents, leaving for more money, and claiming everyone else lied to him. They think to themselves, “Sure, Rich isn’t perfect, but he’s not an evil guy. He’s our coach, so leave him be!”
When you’ve been fed the ESPN spin that Saban is worse than Bobby Knight himself, it is probably a natural urge to take a pot shot at Saban to make your new coach look better. Of course, it could just be due to the fact that Saban used to coach at Michigan State.
As for others jumping on the bandwagon and attacking Saban’s recruiting, that’s really just par for the course that this point. Non-Alabama fans have been finding ways to discount Saban’s recruiting ability from day one. The early sentiment was, “Oh, he recruited well at LSU because it’s a one school state and all the talent there plays for LSU. He’ll never do nearly as well at Alabama because Tuberville, Fulmer, Spurrier, and Richt are all such great recruiters. Besides, the top talents want a sexy name, and Alabama is ancient.” Now that Saban has achieved similar recruiting success at Alabama, people are starting to say “Well, when you can offer immediate playing time, recruits are bound to go there. We’re already stacked for 2008.” and, “We don’t want a flashy 5 or 4 star when we could have a sold 2 or 3 who wants to be at our school.” Of course, there are Tide fans who talk too much as well, which annoys me greatly.
All in all, getting worked up over this won’t do anybody any good. Now, you can certainly express your thoughts and opinions on this topic, but don’t go all angry message board nerd on us…. please. I’ll always respect somebody who actually writes out an opinion driven thought instead of sensationalism.
Besides, it’s time to start proving our worth on the field this year and years on, which means bragging or bashing doesn’t amount to much in the end. Talk is ok for now, but doesn’t really mean much in November.
The Tide Druid 
February 15, 2008 at 11:59 am
The argument why Saban could never recruit at Alabama was flawed, to say the least. You heard LSU fans saying how easy it was to recruit at LSU. It seems like they completely ignored the fact that no one had ever done that at LSU before. Saban completely changed that program, and as soon as he got to Alabama people were actually saying that Gerry Dinardo got it started!
Auburn fans keep trying to remind everyone that they are so deep this year and that is why no one is going to come this year. They too seem to ignore the fact that UGA, UF, and USC have that problem, but it does not seem to effect their recruiting.
Of course, my favorite one is the argument that to be a 4-star or a 5-star player you must not have good character. If other programs no longer want to recruit these evil 4-star and 5-star players I guess will have to have them.
Druid, you are right of course it does not mean anything until we do it on the field, but you have to enjoy some of the excuse making by other programs.
February 15, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Well said. Actually taking a deep breath is good sometimes.
http://www.alabamagameday.net
February 15, 2008 at 3:35 pm
[…] commented on the situation including the influential Roll Bama Roll, the always on-top of things Tide Druid, and the interesting Third Saturday in […]
February 16, 2008 at 1:08 pm
[…] pot-shot at Nick Saban by FanHouse’s Brian Cook. I replied, and so did a whole bunch of other Alabama bloggers. Brian took Round Two to his personal blog, MGOBLOG, and his post is most certainly […]
January 11, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Very efficiently written article. It will be useful to anyone who employess it, as well as me. Keep up the good work – can’r wait to read more posts.