Transfer Portal 2023-2024...

[Superdad]

Hindsight is 50/50...

Is that you, Pat?

 

[jjv0004]

Recruiting is a giant game of moving pieces around the chess board using the art of persuasion.

For instance with the Mack addition, my first reaction was I hope this doesn't influence Sayin. Next day, Sayin is gone. Now, there are some reports the staff liked Mack more than Sayin, nothing confirmed yet, but the other version people are speculating is that Sayin told the staff he wanted to leave.

The problem is Sayin is a Jenga piece and an important one. Removing him destabilizes more pieces.

Part of recruiting is building things in such a way that you see what makes a stable base to build off of, what pieces will get you more pieces, what pieces can you move without knocking others down. It's this giant puzzle you have to piece together. You also have to talk the pieces into playing their role in the tower.

DeBoer seems like a great Xs and Os coach, but I predicted his exit from Washington before the Alabama offer and his AD came out recently and said he was unsure DeBoer was staying in Washington months ago, well before the Alabama opening.

I'm just not sure he built a good Jenga tower at Washington. I mean he built a tall one, it reached pretty high, but it appears to be falling and then he comes to Alabama and that tower is now wobbling as well.

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse though, you asked and I'm trying to explain. The art of persuasion, which is what recruiting is, is an important part of managing a roster. Now that the portal exists you have to re-recruit your players every single year.

Having said that, I don't really care how he build his Jenga tower or how stable it is if he can reach high enough to win a championship.

You are beating a dead horse at this point. You don't know what happened with Sayin. You are completely guessing and probably completely wrong. No way DeBoer says to the top ranked QB in the nation, "I don't think you can fit my system and I am going to bring in another QB for you to complete with in 2025." NOT A CHANCE.

Sayin came for Saban. Saban is gone. Makes sense that he would now look around.

We all know you didn't want DeBoer, don't think he can recruit and think he is destined to fail. You don't have to keep telling us. Are you trying to make everyone on this board feel worse about the situation. If you can't say anything good at this point, please stop posting. The sun is still out today, hopefully you and your family are healthy and the sun will still be here in the fall when football starts again.

 

[KrAzY3]

The reason he did not offer is because he was not going to waste time on a player with whom he had no chance. He was a 1 season P5 HC who had no shot. Time is precious, he wasn't going to throw it out of the window.
The facts you outlined are correct. Your interpretation of those facts and your conclusion is almost surely wrong. The only reason I added "almost" is because we are all guessing but your conclusion makes no sense.

I have to correct this, because while the site I checked showed no offer from Washington, someone posted a tweet saying Washington did indeed offer Sayin.

So, I don't know anything further about the offer and won't speculate further about that aspect of it.

 

[AlexanderFan]

Recruiting is a giant game of moving pieces around the chess board using the art of persuasion.

For instance with the Mack addition, my first reaction was I hope this doesn't influence Sayin. Next day, Sayin is gone. Now, there are some reports the staff liked Mack more than Sayin, nothing confirmed yet, but the other version people are speculating is that Sayin told the staff he wanted to leave.

The problem is Sayin is a Jenga piece and an important one. Removing him destabilizes more pieces.

Part of recruiting is building things in such a way that you see what makes a stable base to build off of, what pieces will get you more pieces, what pieces can you move without knocking others down. It's this giant puzzle you have to piece together. You also have to talk the pieces into playing their role in the tower.

DeBoer seems like a great Xs and Os coach, but I predicted his exit from Washington before the Alabama offer and his AD came out recently and said he was unsure DeBoer was staying in Washington months ago, well before the Alabama opening.

I'm just not sure he built a good Jenga tower at Washington. I mean he built a tall one, it reached pretty high, but it appears to be falling and then he comes to Alabama and that tower is now wobbling as well.

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse though, you asked and I'm trying to explain. The art of persuasion, which is what recruiting is, is an important part of managing a roster. Now that the portal exists you have to re-recruit your players every single year.

Having said that, I don't really care how he build his Jenga tower or how stable it is if he can reach high enough to win a championship.

So, regarding Washington's tower, you hold it against him that his players are leaving because he's gone, and you're holding it against him that Alabama's players are leaving because Saban is gone?

This isn't recruiting, and if it is, more kids have stayed than have left. There is no precedence for what just happened at Alabama. The greatest coach of all time just retired, and for the first time in history players were allowed to leave without restriction. Not only can they leave without restriction, they can be contacted and coerced into leaving by other universities.

So, my question is, what did you think would happen, and who do you think could've handled this any better? Kiffin? Sark? There would still be collectives at Texas and Ohio State outbidding Alabama for these kids. Asking CKD to have relationships with every college football player in America is wildly unfair and makes it seem like you're not realistically giving him a chance to change your opinion of him. He lost a quarterback, for whatever reason, and he gained a quarterback. For all intents and purposes these two guys are equal, neither has done anything at the collegiate level. For all we know nothing could have swayed Sayin to stay, maybe nothing could've swayed any of these kids from leaving.

You keep going back to recruiting, but this isn't recruiting. This is beat on Alabama for 30 days and see what's left. I fully believe, and expect, changes to be made to this system after it has eroded the foundation of this juggernaut that Saban created.

 

[DrJJoyner]

Could be like when Emmitt Smith went to the Cardinals because "God told me to do it" when in reality it was green that told him to do it.

In fairness, as a Cowboys fan, he would have stayed with the team if Bill Parcells hadn't wanted to go younger and cheaper. He thought he still had some football in the tank and went where he was wanted.

 

[CrimsonCleanse]

CKD put together a staff with a quickness. Look how hard it was getting for Saban to find....anybody. Not just quality assistants...but....absolutely anybody. That's how we ended up with retreads and others who really weren't qualified. O'Brien, Golding and Rees immediately come to mind. The 2022 and 2023 teams, despite all their hype, were very much hot messes. As someone pointed out, talent covered up A LOT of issues. The coaching was poor, to say the very least. Saban's retirement will go the way of all other big news stories. Eventually, he will just become a part of our past. Once the dust settles and everyone who was committed to the GOAT and the GOAT only has filtered out and found who they deem as the next GOAT and the guys who actually want to be at Bama start getting coached by qualified staffers, I think the results will be very nice. Wait and see

 

[DrJJoyner]

Yes, but Sark, Kirby, and Norvell are not Saban either. But that's where most of these guys are going. So it's something more than just "not Saban" going on.

Relationships. Those guys and their staffs were recruiting most of the same kids Saban and his staff was. They have relationships with those guys and DeBoer and most of his staff doesn't.

Lots of folks have talked about the "Saban discount." We attracted folks that might otherwise have gone to other schools because we had the GOAT. And we didn't have to get into the same NIL bidding wars because we had the GOAT.

 

[81usaf92]

I don't necessarily disagree that we have slipped, but sometimes when we are so close to things we don't see them for what they really are and we take them for granted. We've won 2 SEC titles, made two playoffs, lost a national title game and beat UGA twice in the last 3 seasons. There are only two teams that have had more program success than us over the last three years, and that's UGA and Michigan. I think DeBoer will be a great coach for us, if we give him the chance, but it will be challenging to replicate the success we've had over the last 3 years.

As for the players leaving, I don't care. My preference is to get it over with as soon as possible and rid ourselves of those that don't want to be here without Saban as the coach. If there are others, then I hope it happens in droves over the next day or so. I just don't want to be dealing with this nonsense two weeks from now.

But everyone looks at results as a sign of decline instead of the institutional strength. For instance… most people would say the Patriots dynasty died in 2020 when Brady left, but the dynasty probably actually started to die in 2017 when the front office started to shift priorities to account for an aging quarterback and a bad skill player room. The Patriots went from being a thrifty organization focused on building players from within and getting players at a discount to an organization making aggressive moves and hitting the cap ceiling. yeah they won the SB in 18 but they are still feeling the shockwaves from buying that team in 2017.

Bama has sacrificed great coaching for great recruiting, and we have paid for it.

 

[Bpilktree]

If you couldn't see the internal decline you weren't paying attention.

Teams that fall apart and give up don’t go in and win the SEC championship beating the 2 time defending champion. They fall apart like you saw at Clemson or A&M. This team still was a play away from being national champions. Also stop comparing teams and players from years ago. Players all across the country have changed the game changed if Saban didn’t change at all you would have had a Clemson type fall.

 

[davefrat]

In fairness, as a Cowboys fan, he would have stayed with the team if Bill Parcells hadn't wanted to go younger and cheaper. He thought he still had some football in the tank and went where he was wanted.

I think it was money and padding his lead on the all-time rushing list.

I don't think he even cared about winning at that point, and I don't have an issue with that at all.

 

[rolltide_21]

Just checking on you guys to make sure everyone’s ok. Breathe!

 

[KrAzY3]

You don't know what happened with Sayin. You are completely guessing and probably completely wrong.

For the record, the two versions of events I posted that people are speculating about are not actually my initial interpretation. My initial impression was more simplistic, they got Mack to create depth but in doing so pushed Sayin out, who saw it as a sign of disrespect. That was just speculation, but so is the idea Sayin said he wanted out. Supposedly some "insiders" claimed Sayin was told the staff prefers Mack but that's also unverified.

Certainly one of those is somewhat accurate, but yes no one knows for sure right now but it was bad optics to accept the Mack commitment prior to Sayin hitting the portal. In the least it lead some people, myself included to draw certain conclusions.

So, regarding Washington's tower, you hold it against him that his players are leaving because he's gone.

No, but I hold his 30 something ranked incoming recruiting class (worse than his predecessor did) at Washington against him. He wasn't reloading at a sufficient rate.

As to the rest, I do think anything that involves persuading a player to be on your team is an aspect of recruiting. Some are better at it than others. So to me it's kind of elementary to conclude a better persuader will persuade better.

 

[colbysullivan]

This will be my last post for a while...

College football has been destroyed by greed, both from within and without. The last week has shown me there's no such thing as player loyalty. Words like "The Bama Standard" and "The Process" are a lie. You have ex-players like Marlon Humphrey saying he would have been in the portal too. He is a BAMA LEGACY for crying out loud. NIL was the worst thing that has ever happened to college football, and you can't take it back. Actually, the casual fans who know nothing about the game who are absolutely EATING IT UP might be worse than NIL. I'm out.

 

[bamaslammer]

For those freaking out because of Sayin, what do Tee Margin, Josh Heupel, Craig Krenzel, Matt Mauck, Chris Leak, Matt Flynn, Greg McElroy & Jake Coker all have in common? They all wearing a natty ring. QB's important, like really important, but 5 star talent is not the primary quality that these men had. DeBore doesn't have time to smooth out our ruffled fur. He's going to put a good team on the field and we are going to weather this storm. By time we come out the other side the world will know that vacation is over.

 

[crimsonaudio]

Well there's the roads. And the Aqueducts.

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

 

[davefrat]

Teams that fall apart and give up don’t go in and win the SEC championship beating the 2 time defending champion. They fall apart like you saw at Clemson or A&M. This team still was a play away from being national champions. Also stop comparing teams and players from years ago. Players all across the country have changed the game changed if Saban didn’t change at all you would have had a Clemson type fall.

The team was clearly in decline since the 2020 national championship, but it was "falling apart."

Also, it's widely accepted that this past season was one of Saban's best coaching jobs ever for the very reason that this team early on looked to be out of the running for even the division, much less the SEC title and the playoffs. But the old master once again showed why he's the best to ever do it by leading a very flawed team to a league title and within a couple plays of playing for the national title.

 

[davefrat]

For those freaking out because of Sayin, what do Tee Margin, Josh Heupel, Craig Krenzel, Matt Mauck, Chris Leak, Matt Flynn, Greg McElroy & Jake Coker all have in common? They all wearing a natty ring. QB's important, like really important, but 5 star talent is not the primary quality that these men had. DeBore doesn't have time to smooth out our ruffled fur. He's going to put a good team on the field and we are going to weather this storm. By time we come out the other side the world will know that vacation is over.

I'm not sure you can win a national championship anymore without an elite QB...and by elite I mean first round NFL talent.

Who was the last QB to win a national championship who wasn't at least a second rounder?

Just like the NFL, college football is a QB dominated sport anymore.

 

[CrimsonCleanse]

The end of Saban's career has people acting like panic buyers in early 2020. People act like 10 years from now, there will still be kids either transferring out or turning Bama down because Saban isn't there. I am so over the Downs soap opera. If he can figure out a way to reverse Saban's aging and put him at 60 (or younger) instead of 72, then he should get to work on that immediately. I swear, these players are taking the man's retirement as a personal affront.

 

[Isaiah 63:1]

I’m souring on college football.

Same. I've vowed not to watch another college football game until August 24...

 

[CrimsonTitles]

It's gonna be okay, folks. It's just one QB, and we still have a pretty stacked room. If we lose TS or Longergan, then our immediate options might start to get a little thin. There was a little bit of speculation that Lonergan might not ever get a chance because of Sayin, so now that is solved. I remember hearing Tua level hype regarding him. If he's the real deal, then he's a guy we have for two years. That should give us time to get another long term option in here.

Now it's time to go put the full court press on the MacIntyre kid. He would be the perfect long term replacement for Sayin.