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From HOW THE SEC BECAME GOLIATH by Ray Glier. Copyright © 2012 by Ray Glier.
Reprinted with permission from Howard Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

In essence, what Saban did at LSU and what he is doing at Alabama is not about collecting talent. Not even close. He is building a team. He does not start with players, he starts with definitions of players just like the Cowboys and Browns did. When Alabama goes recruiting it is not finding players, it is eliminating players because it has defined what it wants at each position. If you are not this height and weight with this speed and you do not reach certain benchmarks in the critical factors for the position, the Crimson Tide drops you off the list.

Here is how it starts. Alabama collects sales leads. It pours over newspaper clippings and internet message boards. It jots down names, perhaps a tip that came from the uncle of the woman who works in the mail room. You know that tip: “Bama ought to look at this kid from Huntsville” or some other town.

Alabama also tracks Twitter and follows the recruiting mavens who go to the NIKE camps and Under Armor Combines where coaches are not allowed. The Tide’s recruiting staff looks over the e-mails that come in with leads about the spectacular eighth-grade or freshman player.

At the very start, Alabama does not care if the reporting from this array of sources is 100 percent credible. In time, the coaches and personnel staff will determine if it is. What they are doing is compiling an early catalog of names, preferably within that golden recruiting area of a five-hour drive in any direction from campus.

It is when the names are assembled for a particular recruiting class that the real work begins. The first thing is to get players on campus for summer camps and put them through Alabama’s drills. Saban has to see them. The youth camps, ages 7 to 12, can average 1,400 campers. The more important camps, freshmen through rising seniors, draw 600 per session. There is also an offensive line/defensive line camp that draws another 400, plus a two-day 7-on-7 camp that brings in 30 to 40 teams.   

It is because of these camps and all the film that Alabama coaches gather that they do not buy into hype, which comes at the Bama recruiters from every angle. They scout with their eyes, not their ears. People are trying to influence Alabama coaches every day about a player, but the system pushes away “the friend of the program” trying to advocate for a player. If they do not fit into the system with height-weight-speed and critical factors for the position they are discarded. Recruiting for Alabama is not finding players, it is eliminating players. That’s how Alabama assistant coaches can turn off all the chatter and glide through all the text messages they get about various high school players.
    
“If you don’t have an anchor system you can get caught up in the fog of confusion in scouting college players and recruiting high school players,” said Phil Savage (former General Manager of the Cleveland Browns).
   
There is no fog with exact definitions of players. Outside linebackers in Alabama’s 3-4 need to be at least 6-foot 3 ˝, 240 to 250 pounds with long arms so they can reach the offensive tackle first with their hands and then beat him on the edge. Adrian Hubbard, a red-shirt sophomore, is the prototype at 6-6, 248 pounds because he can engage blockers before they engage him. The Bama inside linebackers have to project to 260 pounds, which is defensive line size for other schools, but the Tide wants those inside backers to take on guards all day.
   
Alabama does not like little people. It likes big people. Heavyweights do not fight lightweights for a reason and it is because big people beat up little people. The Crimson Tide, more than anything, is about big, physical players. Bama is built for power and explosive playmakers.
   
You might look at the Tide’s Dee Hart, the 5-foot-9, 180-pound back, as an outlier, but there is room in the system for “specialty” players, those kids who can fly and return kicks and be a third down back. It’s not all thumpers.
   
Just look at the Alabama corners. They have to be at least 5-foot-11 and they have to be able to tackle. If they can’t tackle, forget it, Alabama walks away without thinking twice. If corners can’t tackle, the Tide cannot have a balanced defense.
   
Alabama takes an NFL approach to handling personnel. It ranks players on a board, much like the NFL does. It sets its board and it does not care what other people think. In fact, it has been known to happen that when Alabama offers a player, that player can expect multiple offers within two weeks, perhaps as many as 25.


Alabama has a general disdain for the 5-star, 4-star, any star rankings of high school players. In the Cleveland system, they did not want scouts to say “this is a third-rounder.” In the Bama system they do not want coaches to say “this is a 4-star.” Alabama feels the system is flawed, not just because as many two-star players make it as starters in the NFL as five-star players, but also because Bama is recruiting to its definitions.

“The system allows scouts and recruiters to see players through the same lens,” Savage said. “You take the emotions out of it and evaluate in a systematic way. It pulls everyone together so they are looking at the same thing.”

Tennessee has had three coaches in five years and now there is a hodge podge of players in Knoxville. It happens in pro ball, too, and it helps explain the Vols’ losing records the last two years. There has been no uniformity.

Here is the thing with other programs, those outside the SEC. They see a big guy with athletic ability and they think wideout. Saban thinks defense. Alabama sees a bigger body on a lean frame with speed, and is thinking shutdown corner. Always, the Alabama head coach sees players from a defensive perspective. Look at Mark Barron, a sensational offensive player in high school. He was a safety at Alabama and became a first-round pick.

Mike Clayton, the former LSU wide receiver, saw Saban evaluate players in Baton Rouge and move them around and then watched them succeed. Corey Webster was a receiver and became a very rich defensive back in the NFL. Marcus Spears was a tight end and became a wealthy defensive end in the NFL. Joseph Addai was a quarterback and became a rich running back in the NFL.

“Saban came from the NFL and he knows what an NFL coach is looking for,” Clayton said. “If you have size and good feet, if you are good enough in my eyes to play this one position in college, he says, you are good enough to play it in the NFL where the money is.

“No player at the time wanted to do what he said, at first. They all thought he was out to get them. They were upset, they scored touchdowns in high school, they wanted to be in the limelight. He switched them over to defense and he required them to be great. He instilled confidence in them; they had to compete to be great, and he would coach them harder, and he made them into good players. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

Alabama rates players on a scale from 1 to 5 with 5 being limited and 1 being very rare. The Crimson Tide does not recruit 5s and it hunts for 1s. They settle for those players who are 2.2 on the scale.

“The player will grade himself if you watch enough film,” Savage said.

It helps that Alabama can start with the unusually large and muscular, the high school kids that are already big and fast.  When you win national championships you can attract those kids. Still, Saban has every recruit meet with the strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran to evaluate the players’ frame and growth potential. If there is an issue, the player is marked on the recruiting board with a tag or alert.

Alabama is more cautious about putting alerts or tags on players because when it starts to research these players they are 15 and 16 years old. The Tide coaches have to see the player in person and then put them in the hopper. The staff is conscious of a young player’s frame and whether he has the wide shoulders and the look of a player who can add bulk. If they pass that look, then Alabama starts to get position specific and study critical factors like the ability to bend, overall athletic ability, and strength/explosion.

Believe it or not, Alabama was not on to Trent Richardson at the start of his junior season in Pensacola, Florida. He had an ankle injury and there was no way to project him forward. Richardson healed and signed with Alabama over Florida, probably thanks to a boost from an administrator at his school who once worked for the Alabama athletic department. He was a first round draft pick of the NFL in 2012.

Alabama digs in when it recruits players and investigates whether the player can take hard coaching. It is a difficult place to play and mental makeup is an important factor, a critical factor, in recruiting a player.

Alabama will put a neon yellow dot next to a recruit who has academic issues. They will put an orange dot next to players who have character issues. These are the players that need to be investigated more. Was there a criminal act? Is there a coachability issue? The character dots came from Marciniak who worked for Tom Landry and Gil Brandt of the Cowboys. He would place a back dot next to a player with character issues, criminal acts, etc. and it was likely the Cowboys would not draft that player. Marciniak said he didn’t get to put many of those black dots on the draft board, so he had to be right.

If the measurables of height, weight, speed are not there, Alabama is not interested in a player. If an assistant still swears by a high school player, he has to go through Saban to get a name on the big board and that is not an easy thing to do. The head coach has the final authority, much like Belichick had the final say on the board with the Browns. There are no independent contractors on the Alabama staff who are standing up in the meeting and declaring a player ready to go for a scholarship. The vetting of a player always ends with the general manager, who is also the head coach, and that is Nick Saban.

“Nick said one time, that in pro football you get one pick every 32 choices,” Savage said, “but in college, he said, if we are picking the right guys, we could be signing four or five first-rounders every year.”

In the 2010 draft two Alabama players (linebacker Rolando McClain, Oakland; and cornerback Kareem Jackson, Houston) were picked in the first round. In the 2011 draft, four Alabama players (defensive lineman Marcell Dareus, Buffalo; wide receiver Julio Jones, Atlanta; offensive lineman James Carpenter, Seattle; running back Mark Ingram, New Orleans) were picked in the first round. In the 2012 draft, four Alabama players (running back Trent Richardson, Cleveland; safety Mark Barron, Tampa Bay; cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick, Bengals; linebacker Dont’a Hightower, Patriots) were taken in the first round. There was a near miss on a fifth first rounder with linebacker Courtney Upshaw the first pick of the second round by Baltimore. 

The 2008 recruiting class actually produced five first-round picks. Because of injuries, Hightower and Barron actually came out a year later than projected. The 2009 class had three when you include tackle James Carpenter with Richardson and Kirkpatrick.

One Alabama insider said it is the job of the assistant coach to persuade Saban on a player, which means acquiring more information, investigating deeper and making sure the player has been to camp. Saban puts in the work watching film of players. He knows who he likes and doesn’t like. The people who have worked for Saban find it hard to believe there is another college head coach who puts more effort into recruiting.

Saban can disagree with his assistant coaches about players, but it is not an easy thing to disagree with the boss on a player. “I have learned working with Nick,” said Tommy Moffitt, the LSU strength coach, “that if he likes a guy you better keep your mouth shut.”

The Alabama strongman has been rapped for the over-signing of players and NFL-style roster management, which have been legitimate knocks. Saban has also been censured by media for Alabama’s use of medical red-shirts. The Wall Street Journal reported that players who were not really hurt were forced off the scholarship roll under the guise of being injured because Alabama wanted to use the scholarship for a better player. But there have been several occasions where Saban has dismissed players from the team and pushed for them to take medical red-shirts because they failed multiple drug tests. One of the things he didn’t want to do was have the bus roll over a kid twice: once for the drug bust, a second time with a smear to the reputation if the news of a positive drug test got out. The designation as a “medical red-shirt” brought fewer questions as to why a player was no longer with the program and there was less chance his reputation would be harmed.

There is one potential issue with Alabama players who make it through one of the most rigorous programs in all of college football. Can an NFL team get more out of the player than Saban got out of the player? Think about it. The Alabama player is inside an NFL system for three or four years and climbing toward a peak. He has been coached by an NFL-caliber coach. Does he hit a ceiling in Tuscaloosa? We’ll find out with this run of players like Mark Ingram, Julio Jones, Rolando McClain, among others. I’m just asking. I don’t know.

What Alabama is running into in recruiting these days is the rival school telling the recruit, “They have too many guys at that position, great players, you shouldn’t go there.” The Tide turns it around on the rival school by telling the high school recruit, “They must not think much of you; we think you can play here and you will be just fine.”

The players who come on campus for the 9-12th grade camps have notes put in their files constantly. They are measured and if they do not project to reach the definitions for a position they are dropped off the list one by one. It is not easy work. The Alabama class of 2014 still had 400 names on it in April, 2012. When the Tide first started to investigate players for the 2014 class, it had 700 to 800 names.

The Crimson Tide will eventually offer 100 scholarships to those 400, which absolutely blows away Steve Spurrier’s contention that Saban only has to snap his fingers for recruits to sign for Alabama. Here is what the South Carolina coach said:

"He's got a nice little gig going, a little bit like (John) Calipari. He tells guys, 'Hey, three years from now, you're going to be a first-round pick and go.' If he wants to be the greatest coach or one of the greatest coaches in college football, to me, he has to go somewhere besides Alabama and win, because they've always won there at Alabama."

Saban does have a nice gig. Rabid fans, big stadium, a lot of cash, and on and on. But Spurrier should look at page 194 of the 2011 Alabama media guide. From 2003-2006, the four years under coach Mike Shula, the Crimson Tide was 26-24. Spurrier then has to look at page 193. In four years under coach Mike Dubose (1997-2000), Alabama was 24-23.

You do not just toss the footballs out on the field and win at Alabama. It takes recruiting and coaching. The quick fact check suggests that Spurrier poked at Bama without a lot of thought, or maybe he was just bored and wanted to pick on somebody like he used to do when he had great teams at Florida (he has a great team percolating at South Carolina).

Perhaps Spurrier should have said, “They’ve always won there at Alabama….when they have had the right coach.”

Bear Bryant was the right coach. Gene Stallings was the right coach. Nick Saban is the right coach.






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