TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- University of Alabama coach Nick Saban has heard the criticism of his supposed oversigning of athletes and took time during Wednesday’s news conference to answer his critics.
Saban has long been the punching bag for advocates against oversigning -- the act of signing more players to scholarships than the school has available and having to cut players to ensure you remain under 85 total scholarships.
In 2011, the SEC enacted a yearly scholarship limit of 25. The 2012 signing class was the first group of recruits that Alabama had to deal with a limit on scholarships. Saban hit his mark, signing 26 because of an extra backlogged scholarship, but lamented having to do so.
“There’s a cynical attitude a lot of people have toward whether coaches are really doing what’s in the best interest of the young people that we coach, which I sort of resent, to be honest with you,” Saban said. “We actually took some opportunities away from guys who wanted to go to Alabama that we couldn’t sign and they couldn’t come here because we couldn’t offer that option to them.
“I don’t see how that’s really good for the league, but it is what it is and we’ll manage it in the future.”
Saban said working within the confines of the new rule was restricting.
“It was much more difficult management, to hit the number and not going over at all,” Saban said. “I think sometimes, for whatever reasons … there seems to be so much of a negative reaction to this whole idea of what y’all call gray-shirting.”
Saban touched on another issue seemingly on its way to becoming an NCAA rule: multi-year scholarships. Some in the Big Ten conference have already begun offering guaranteed four-year scholarships, as opposed to the current norm of year-to-year scholarships agreements.
“I guess I’m getting old but I’ve been through the whole cycle of this multi-year scholarship deal when I was in college which was many moons ago,” Saban said. “There were lawsuits galore because we gave people four-year scholarships and they would violate a rule or something and then somebody would try to take their scholarship away and then there would be a lawsuit and all kind of problems.
“That’s why we went to one-year scholarships. Again, I think this is some people’s cynical approach to think that coaches don’t have the best interest of the young people that they coach in mind. … I don’t really know if it’s a good rule or a bad rule, I just have been around long enough to know it caused a lot of problems when we had the rule in the past.”
