A note to the incoming Alabama football athlete

 

You wouldn’t know that a below-average sized, thinning-haired, 69-year old male who last played the game when your grandparents were alive, would be able to coax you – the giant among giant on the high school football stage – enough to go and play in a State that to most people would be one they wouldn’t want to visit, let alone live.  

And yet year after year, the Pied Piper of Tuscaloosa brings the Gods of American High School into campus and gets them to sign on the dotted line.

So here’s a letter to that class. You could replay this letter for many of the major programs, by the way.

*****

If you come to Tuscaloosa, you’ll know this: Every Nick Saban recruit has won a National Championship at the University of Alabama. You’ll be a God on Campus.

And if you are one of the Gods of Gods on campus, Nick Saban’s going to make you a lot of money at a pro-level. Your football ‘campus’ is as good as a NFL complex, anyway. He’s got more first round picks than anyone in his career- 38 so far. This year you can put a projected six more with DeVonta Smith, Christian Barmore, Jaylen Waddle, Patrick Surtain, Najee Harris and Alex Leatherwood projected to go in the top echelon.

But if you’re a God but not God-God, then know this: Saban and his team have put a total of 96 players in the NFL Draft, which means that one-and-a-bit of his total teams have gone pro. Alabama carries with it a weight like no other.

Saban’s getting rid of so many players to the NFL – and many of them are juniors – that freshmen and sophomore are starting up as a necessity now. And yes, you might have a lean year (meaning you lose a freak game to Auburn in that weird stadium in Jordan-Hare), but then you’ll be embedded, and ready to win again. For Saban, every loss is bulletin board material. You’re gonna win National Championships, bro!

He doesn’t just know what a shitty area in America because he’s visited so many of them on his recruiting trips (it’s not all ritzy prep schools in Southern California), but he’s lived it.

He grew up in West Virginia, where his Dad was a hard-pushing football coach, but he was part of a coal mining town where most of the crowd went to work below the earth. He’s been around hard graft, black lung and he’s experienced crappiness. When he says: “I know what you’re going through in terms of living in a shitty place and wanting to get out”, he means it.

But although Saban’s silvery tongue got you to sign to the dotted line and ensure your education would be at Alabama (take the Astronomy class, it’s great!), will you stay?

After all, the guy ahead of you who played for Saban as a freshman’s probably not going to go anywhere for the next three years, meaning that you have one year to prove yourself before you start thinking about your future in the pros. Behind you is another five-star who’s in the same class as you, pushing, jostling and biting for your spot. It’s the Tuscaloosa Hunger Games, in short.

That sucks, because suddenly the extra bump from the recruiting sites just because you sucked up enough to come to Tuscaloosa looks a little less shiny. What happens if you see the field only as a junior, and you never make it? Shouldn’t you have gone to a better place to shine?

And if you leave for the transfer portal, there’s a possibility that you will go to a school that’s not in the stratosphere as an Alabama (most are), because their scholarship spots are full, and also they might bring in – which your coach wants – where if you transfer, you’ll have to sit out a year. Saban calls it “roster management”, but really it’s code for: “I don’t want my guy competing for a spot next year on a potential rival just because he couldn’t get into my future Pro Bowl team”.

Should you have shut down the ego and thought more clearly about where you could make a difference and sooner, or were you just pleased to be the three or four-star who’s going to Tuscaloosa, who people aren’t sure whether you got the Saban bump?

That’s the choice that now you’ve signed, and you’ll live with it. You may well have chosen National Championships and potential NFL riches now, but remember, National Championships don’t pay NFL money.

I hope you’ve made the right choice.