I believe Saban was doing two things. 1- He was commenting on his view that he doesn’t believe this is good for college football, as he has done with other topics before, and that he doesn’t want to see things move in this direction. 2- He was telling Alabama boosters that, unlike HUNH and the portal, if they plan on staying at the top this is what it will now take, so they better step up. I’ll admit I may be biased, but neither is disingenuous or whiny bitching, imo.
On a most basic level, I think Jimbo's fighting back against the "other-rizing" of his players. I'm sure he takes it personal that he's accused of malfeasance and his predominantly poor, black players are denigrated by a largely alluent, white commetariot. These are young guys that have done nothing wrong, and Saban feels the need to put them on blast because he's not in control of things like he wants to be. So I don't blame Jimbo for being equal forceful about his team, nor am I surprised he comes off as defensive.
Which of those couldn't have been accomplished by talking about the problems generally? Directly calling out A&M and Travis Hunter served no purpose other than being petty or emotional about it.
That’s your opinion. Perhaps by being more direct, it will cause something to happen. Maybe not. But it sure as hell caused a bigger discussion than had he just discussed this in generalities.
Not sure, but it's the most well known brand in college football. Bama is a top 5 revenue team so we're not talking about some 3rd rate program that's strapped for cash and can't compete.
I think it's probably easier to make a sell to your boosters when you make the point specific about the team that just beat you last year and had a higher ranked recruiting class than you did.
Alabama boosters weren’t going to step up without calling out Jimbo & Hunter rather than the system? That doesn’t seem likely to me.
I just don't see that as calling them out. It's just a plain explanation of how things work now and using the two most obvious examples, including a huge threat in your own division, of what we need to be doing. There are no more bags being dropped at relatives houses, $100 handshakes in the hallways, etc. It's a straight up pay for play, and that's fine, but it's a new system.
No one is denigrating the 17 year olds getting paid to go to aTm. All negativity is toward the oily nouveau riche beta men trying to buy prestige now that they believe nothing is currently stopping them from doing so. Jimbo doesn’t sound defensive as much as he does whiny and disingenuous about aTm’s obvious (ab)use of NIL.
I too agree that Texas A&M is out of control; a model akin to the Texas public school “Robin Hood” funding system should be instituted and half of A&M’s recruiting class should be transferred to Texas State.
I don't really see how that would work. I think we all assumed these kids would be doing ads and stuff but its just legal loophole for recruiting now. A few guys got TV spots but I guess we'll see what happens this year before I'd make any assumption that companies will be lining up to give big checks to kids in Alabama for national TV campaigns. And if its another Dr Pepper situation I don't see companies like that calling Saban and asking who to give the money to.
I really wish we were about to hear Cecil Hurt on Finebaum. Today is the first day since the season ended where I’ve really missed him.
It's still against the rules to give players money to get them to commit to your school. It's just that there's no enforcement of that. So A&M is breaking the rules but they won't be punished until there's actual leadership in cfb
The bama/Texas alliance going on in group texts with my IRL friends is hilarious. Fascinating to see which side all the neutral party fans are taking here. The evil empire vs the sheep fuckers. Love to see it. also- if saban was trying to motivate bama boosters to dump more into NIL, it may backfire on him. Aggies are already used to pissing away money into the athletic dept. now you gave them more motivation to do it.
If Jimbo does not back off his comments they already won. The SEC media days and their game against Bama will have tremendous ratings.
I think the loophole is the collective can do it, the school/coach can't. So that's why Jimbo distanced himself and said he had no idea what the collective did. The collective just happened to drop bags to the players the coaches wanted the most.
I disagree with this interpretation of his comments. But if this is the needle that Saban is trying to thread, he's throwing a bunch of kids under the bus to do so.
If Saban threw anyone other than boosters abusing the new NIL system under the bus, it was Jimbo, so I can see why Jimbo would take it personally. But, I can’t see how Saban’s comments could be considered throwing the players under the bus.
The schedule has been out for a while. Saban is on Tuesday, Jimbo on Friday. Probably wont even be in BHam at the same time