Nick Saban Dissects Logistics of Signing Date with Pat McAfee
"That's accurate, I like the way you say things so I don't have to say them," said Alabama head coach Nick Saban to Pat McAfee on his weekly visit on his program.
The former NFL punter had just laid out the discrepancies in recruiting and in the transfer portal, detailing how name, image and likeness was polluted by pay-for-play guided by agents and back room dealings.
The seven-time national champion spent the majority of his time with The Pat McAfee Show on Thursday discussing Wednesday's National Early Signing Date from a philosophical standpoint.
Essentially, Saban outline the calendar is brutality on coaching staffs that are competing at the highest level of the sport, as the recruiting calendar crescendoes at the same time the College Football Playoff begins.
The adoption of the National Early Signing Date essentially became the day to make moves for the nation's top recruits, creating a crunch on coaching staffs to balance recruiting and preparing for the biggest game of the year.
Alabama just reeled in the No. 2 overall recruiting class with 23 of its 25-member class signing on Wednesday, proving Saban's point, that since its inception, the National Early Signing Date has revolutionized the recruiting calendar.
"Because we have the early signing day, it really kind of became the signing date for, maybe, probably 90% of players who are getting recruiting and then the next phase of that is the recruiting calendar gets moved up, where you can have visits in the summer time and all that type of stuff - which is another thing that's probably good. But I think the most difficult part of that is you've got all that stuff coming together at once in terms of practice, preparation for a bowl game or a playoff game as well as a signing date," said Saban.
"I don't really have solution for what would make it better. Taking away the early signing day? That obviously would clear up the preparation for the games. Moving the signing date up further would impact high school players probably. If I was a high school coach I wouldn't want a player on my team to be able to sign before he finished playing for me because you may have some of that that we have in college where we have 'I'm not going to play in the bowl game because I'm going to get ready to play in the NFL' well 'I'm not really going to play my high school season because I already have a college scholarship'. There's a lot of pro's and con's to all this. I think it is what it is and we all have to live with it. I'm not complaining about it, it's just difficult to do so many different things."
The pair went on to discuss Saban's approach to flipping prospects, the transfer portal and name, image and likeness.
The Crimson Tide head coach used some of his tried and true lines about wanting to choose prospects that create value for themselves, but not being against name, image and likeness as a concept. He confirmed that he likes to only use the transfer portal to fill immediate needs on his roster and all but confirmed many of the NIL numbers we've heard have been inflated by agents to attract other offers.
The calendar gets even crazier next season as the National Early Signing Date coincides with the date of the first round of the College Football Playoff. The allure of a home game on campus is extremely high for a first round games, but would the madness of preparation and end of recruiting be too much for a coaching staff to bear?
McAfee was, as always, blown away by his 20 minutes of time with Saban and gave him praises for beating Georgia and getting the Crimson Tide to this point in the season.
He asked what the veteran's message is to his team right now with the collision of bowl practice, the Christmas holiday, traveling a the high-profile nature of the upcoming game against Michigan.
"Excellence has a price. It doesn't come easy. It's not free. So we've all got to make an investment in what we've got to do when we're here. The couple days we have off for Christmas I want you to enjoy yourself. When we refocus, I don't care if we have media or whatever that we have to deal with. We've got to focus on what we've got to do on the field to play well and that's got to be the number one priority for all of us."
McAfee doubled down asking about "excellence" and Saban wrapped up with a line for the entire audience.
"It's not free, it has a price. You've got to pay for it upfront too."
