Nick Saban Recalls Recruiting Kentucky's Mark Stoops to Michigan State

The Crimson Tide coach has struck gold on the recruiting trail during his time at Alabama but missed out on Stoops and his brothers while he was at Michigan State

University of Alabama coach Nick Saban has won countless recruiting battles since he arrived to Tuscaloosa in 2007. 

But going back to his first stint at Michigan State when he was an assistant coach, Saban stuck out a few times. 

One of those players he missed out on was Kentucky coach Mark Stoops who ended up at Iowa as a defensive back from 1986 to 1988.

“Well, Cardinal Mooney High School in Youngstown was part of my recruiting area for a long time and you know all the Stoops brothers came through there,” Saban said during Wednesday's SEC coaches teleconference. “That’s where they went to school with their dad who was a defensive coordinator there. Even though they all ended up at Iowa. We still tried to recruit them at Michigan State when I was at Michigan State, and Don Bucci was the coach. Ron was a defensive coordinator, which was their dad, who I had a really good relationship with. But Vince Marrow, who’s on his staff right now, also was a player that we recruited from Cardinal Mooney and didn’t get. His brothers all went to Wisconsin. 

"I’m kind of admitting I wasn’t a very good recruiter back in those days.”

Before the Crimson Tide and Wildcats square off this Saturday at 3 p.m (CT) inside Bryant-Denny Stadium on the SEC Network, Stoops praised Saban for the job he has done now and says its smart to take some pointers every now and again from the six-time national champion.

"The job he’s done for so many years is absolutely one of the best, if not the best, to ever coach the game,” Stoops said earlier this week. "He has been around a long time and he does a remarkable job. The man is really like a machine, he goes at it each and every day. He is very consistent in his work and that is evident with the way they recruit and the way they play each and every year.

"I have great admiration for what he does. You would be silly as a football coach not to look at some of the things he does and listen to him and see his approach and not try to grab a few things. You have to be yourself, you have to be authentic, but you are also stupid if you don’t look at some things. People like him and the success he has, if you don’t try to grab and learn from people like that, you are not very bright.

“We are all going to do things our own way and you have to be yourself and be authentic but again, you would be pretty stupid not to look at some of the things he does and try to pick up a few things here and there.”

While Saban and the Spartans lost Stoops to the Hawkeyes, the Crimson Tide coach did win a recruiting battle over Stoops since he has been a coach -- quarterback Mac Jones, who was a Wildcats commit before pledging with Alabama back in the summer of 2016.

“We really liked Mac in high school," Saban said. "We liked his athleticism. He was accurate with the ball. When he came as a freshman, he was probably 180, 185 pounds, was not very strong, needed to mature physically. A very, very smart and bright guy that actually took advantage of being behind some very good quarterbacks, Jalen [Hurts] and Tua [Tagovailoa], in his time here and used those experiences, I think, to help himself develop. 

"But the guy had one of those attitudes where he just wanted to get better and he just wanted to improve and be a player here. That’s something that has paid tremendous dividends for him because he did make a tremendous amount of progress since he was a freshman, and he’s playing very well for us right now.”