Tide Will Still Roll With Loads Of Talented Players
Hey Alabama fans, relax.
And Alabama haters, don’t start celebrating the beginning of the end of the dynasty. Chances are, Alabama still finished ahead of your school.
And college football media who are pushing the panic button, you’re acting like ambulance-chasing tabloid reporters.
Just because Alabama did not finish at the top of the recruiting rankings – oh m gosh, it was way down at sixth or seventh! – doesn’t mean things are starting to crumble in Tuscaloosa, that Nick Saban has lost his magical touch, that the dynasty is showing cracks like the plaster in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
It simply means Alabama had a heck of a recruiting class, just not the best one this time.
It’s funny how Alabama’s success in recruiting has led to all this negativity. Saban, in his post-signing day press conference, spent the entire time on his heels defending this year’s class. One reporter even asked where Alabama “struck out” in recruiting.
“I don’t think we struck out anywhere,” Saban said.
Look, Alabama is so loaded it could have skipped this recruiting class completely and still be in position to win the next National Championship.
The big hole in this recruiting class is one ignored by the media. It’s not in positions or in 5-star recruits (oh, and Alabama signed 11 players in the ESPN 300, which is an outstanding number). It’s the fact that there were zero players from Georgia. This is the Kirby Smart effect.
A tenacious recruiter, Smart signed several players from Georgia while at Alabama and now Smart is steering in-state players to the Dogs. This is one reason Georgia wound up #1 and Bama fell to sixth or seventh, depending on which ranking service you check.
This was also a down year in the normally talent-rich state of Alabama, so Saban and staff had to comb the country for recruits. And those couple of 5-stars that “flipped” to other schools, well Bama was right there in the running, so it’s not like the Tide is off the radar of the top high school athletes.
And, in typical Saban fashion, he started thinking ahead rather than looking behind him; as soon as the last recruit was signed on National Signing Day, he asked for money to renovate the already-plush recruiting lounge.
There’s no panic button in Tuscaloosa. But there is a lot of talent.
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