Nick Saban's Soft Trap Door

Good find.

Do the 12 medical scholarships explain all of the recruiting overage? It seems like Saban must have another cutting technique to make the numbers work.

I wonder if Saban will continue to oversign so dramatically in the coming years. It’s one thing to run off the players that your predecessor brought in and that you never would have recruited, but to cut players you recruited yourself is even sleazier, imo.

I also must admit that I do somewhat admire the creativity and commitment to winning that this demonstrates.

One word. Prick!

If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t Saban.

If you ain’t cheating you ain’t winning.

Tip of the massive iceberg.

From the WSJ article:

Mr. Kirschman said the school offered in the summer of 2009 to pay for his graduate degree in business—an offer he accepted—and that he still gets some of the same perks as players. “I still get game tickets, which is nice,” he says.

I wonder if he will get his free game tickets next year after being prominently featured in this article.

No, Whistling, Texas is winning just fine without cheating. Now your team, TAMU, had a problem of having to cheat to win in the ’80s.

As a former reporter, let me show you how to read between the lines.

It mentions that Alabama has “offered” 12 of these medical scholarships. It does not say how many were accepted. (Since the piece goes on to say that 25 of them have been accepted across the SEC, it would lead one to assume that Bama has nearly half, which is not necessarily true.) Reporters have a habit of being careful about language, and the terminology would have been more consistent if the facts backed that up.

(For all I know, there were 12 given and the reporter was unable to locate the other nine… but we just don’t know that for certain.)

After that, you hear from three players that say essentially the same thing:

1) Man, I wish I could still play.
2) They lived up to what they said they’d do.
3) Man, I really wish I could still play.

As a Bama guy, I’d be more concerned about the perception that Saban is buying roster spots from players by offering them graduate tuition and jobs, and that it would be considered an improper benefit. THAT part strikes me as sleazy.

However, there is no context within the article that indicates Alabama is using this any more than any other team in the SEC… nor is there any evidence proffered that the SEC is abusing this any more than any other conference. It’s just kinda tossed out there, with the hopes that you will assume that is the case.

Look at the opening graf:

“Former Alabama football players say the school’s No. 1-ranked football program has tried to gain a competitive edge by encouraging some underperforming players to quit the team for medical reasons, even in cases where the players are still healthy enough to play.”

Nowhere, in the quotes included, do any of those players mention “competitive edge.” Also, note the phrase “EVEN in cases where the players are still healthy enough to play.” So is there an admission here that some of the players that were encouraged to accept the offer just weren’t able to safely perform?

Yeah, I am going to root for Alabama.
And I will call Sleaze when I see it, even in my own program.
And I will admit this smells dirty on the face, and I don’t like it.

But I am not going to pretend that this article is proof that Alabama is “cheating” this loophole any more than any other team. If THAT fact had been established, it would be expressly stated as such in the article.

Eh, who cares. Saban is still a miserable prick and he’ll die a miserable prick drowning in his miserable prickness. The man knows no joy in any of his ill-got winning.

One of my favorite websites oversigning.com opines.

http://oversigning.com/testing/

Vulcan, you’re a Bama fan? Tell me how Saban makes the numbers work (87 recruits the last 3 years and 85 total players on scholarship).

TTR – I haven’t indulged my inner math nerd. The last time I went to the Oversigning site I got called out on an urgent project in the office, and didn’t make it back.

Until I dig in and can give you some answers, I’m not going to weigh in.

But you have to admit, there are a lot of holes in that WSJ piece. The surface read sounds one hell of a lot more damning than the fine-tooth one. (And it may even be right… but you’d think it would be worded more authoritatively if it were…)

By the way… the bulk of the comment above is in its own thread at Crimson Caravan.
http://crimsoncaravan.fantake.com/

http://crimsoncaravan.fantake.com/2010/09/24/medical-malpractice/

As well as a breakdown of where the Arkansas game will be won.

http://crimsoncaravan.fantake.com/2010/09/23/crunching-the-hogs/

By the way… the above comment (expanded) lives in its own thread:

http://crimsoncaravan.fantake.com/2010/09/24/medical-malpractice/

You are like Woodward and Bernstein rolled into one.

I agree with Vulcan. The story promises a lot more than it delivers. There is some smoke, but not a fire.

I’ve got to agree it’s an almost worthless article in terms of the facts present. They claim at least 25 med schollies have been handed out by SEC schools in the last 3 years, without a school-by-school breakdown. And saying “at least 25” sounds like the data is incomplete.

What does it take to get these numbers from each school? FOIA?

Vulcan is focusing on if med scholarship are used or not. To me the bigger issue is the oversigning not how the flushing of the lesser talent is done. Saban has signed 113 kids in 4 years when there is an 85 scholarship cap. 28 kids got run off somehow and that is not even counting any red shirts from the year before that he inherited. Saban signed an extra class over 4 years and a large one at that.

Actually, I don’t have to admit there are holes in it. Alabama was given a chance to rebut the 12 scholarship claim, and they just provided a bland, say-nothing statement.

“I wonder if he will get his free game tickets next year after being prominently featured in this article.”

tim, I have a hunch he doesn’t need them:
“Mr. Kirschman, who played in two career games, both in 2008…is now working full time as a robot programmer at Mercedes.”

You beat me to it. Still, you gotta wonder, does he program robots, or is he a robot who does programming?

What, robots don’t like football?

‘Nick Saban’s Soft Trap Door’
Damn, I thought maybe Saban’s male lover had written a tell-all.

TTR…

Alabama was not “given a chance to rebut the 12 medical scholarships” claim. Alabama claims to have offered 12 such scholarships within that timeframe. In no way was there an accusation such that the school had to clarify – because you can only ask the questions asked.

It might even be that there WERE in fact 12 of them offered and accepted. But you might have nine players who don’t think there was any shenanigans afoot — even though the article would have you think there is something deeply fishy in all cases.

We just don’t know… and you have to believe that if Karp and Everson did have better knowledge and a clearer grasp of those details, they’d have been worded in a stronger and less ambiguous fashion.

To me this is a better option than encouraging players to transfer as all programs do. At least these kids get to stay at the college and get a real degree if they so choose. You hear people on OBs all the time say “we have to make room for this guy” or such. “Make room” means run people off. Saban here is offering a good option for guys who have passed up on the depth chart and will never play on the field again.

I guess the more honorable thing to do is ignore the guy, bury him on the depth chart and let him rot as a scout teamer in order to keep his scholarship. All the while feeling like he is holding the program back by tying up a scholarship.

This is more honorable. You are thanking him for his service and effort, while also ushering the guy into the next chapter of his life without guilting him or forcing him to go to a second rate college, in order to keep a scholarship.

Saban should tell the kids what he is going to do when he recruits them. Tell them Alabama is signing a class of 28 players. It is going to have spring practice and fall practice. If you are not good enough to make the two deep a year or two in to your career, then you will have three choices — transfer, take a bogus medical scholarship, or be cut.

That is what Saban does. He runs an NFL style camp to separate the wheat from the chaff. He cannot outright cut players because high school coaches would hate him and his competition would use that as point #1 in the living room.

BS medical ships are just wrong. If they are able to practice and work out for Saban to evaluate their skill, they should not be allowed to go on a medical scholarship.

No, he can’t just cut players. He can’t run them off. Coaches used to do that to make the numbers work. They don’t do that anymore because of the NCAA penalties for APR. Players who are being flushed or run off tend to let their grades go, and if the APR is too low, the team loses scholarships.

Yes, this is better for the players than being run off. What would be better for them is to go to a school that didn’t oversign.

Alabama found a loophole. The NCAA needs to close it by limiting schools to, say, 1 medical redshirt per year and no more than 3 active medical redshirts at any one time.

It is up to Alabama to certify the medical scholarships and for the NCAA to accept Alabama’s application.

But if the oversigning.com chart is right, Saban has signed more than 25 players per year every year but one since 2002 (when he’s been a college coach), and in that year, he signed 25. Miles also has oversigned consistently. It’s just how it works in the SEC.

Saban can get away with it because the other SEC schools are doing much the same thing. Where are those kids going to go? It’s not like Texas can come in there and take these guys away, or hurt Saban in the future by telling the HS coaches that he’s screwing their kids. Everybody knows what’s going on.

Players who are being flushed or run off tend to let their grades go, and if the APR is too low, the team loses scholarships.

It reads like they don’t make these offers until basically after the grades come in. They don’t go to a kid right after spring practice and offer him a medical. They wait until the APR is safe for the previous year, and then do it.

Lou: “‘Nick Saban’s Soft Trap Door’
Damn, I thought maybe Saban’s male lover had written a tell-all.”

No. That would have been “Nick Saban’s Soft BACK Door.”

fear_the_cow- if this this is such a win-win for all involved, then the practice should be more widespread. The fact that it isn’t suggests that it’s not.

If you read the comments on this, on the WSJ article, and the oversigning.com post, you see a bunch of Bama fans denying this happens. Why? He’s not breaking any rules. He’s just signing 20% more kids than other programs. That allows him to take qualifying risks (in hopes they make it), high potential head cases (maybe they’ll straighten out), and the low-skilled “heady” types. If he has a chance in one year to load up on a bunch of 4 – 5 star RBs, he can. He can sort them out and dispose of those he doesn’t want so he can take a full load the next year.

It’s not illegal (currently), so why are the Bama fans challenging this data’s truth and significance? Just because it doesn’t support what they want to believe- that they have the country’s best program because they have the smartest coaches and the best kids?

Cody — I’m with you. Although I’m not sure that it isn’t more widespread. Given the increased attention to the oversigning issue and the fact that Alabama is a defending champion, it’s easy to see why it would be singled out. There might be others for all we know.

I don’t like the potential for abuse. Can you imagine what someone like Houston Nutt would do with such a loophole? I understand he’s really close to being able to spell “medical.”

Cody -

On the surface it looks worse. But when you think about it, its not. How many players are encouraged to transfer to lower divisions to play? How is that a better option? If you can’t play at UT, you are better off getting a degree from UT, than going to SFA to play ala Ben Wells. Mack Brown was all too happy to accomodate that, but if he had the true best interests of the kid at heart, he would talk him into staying.

Yeah, what I’m asking is: why would Mack want them to transfer rather than get a medical redshirt? Either way you’re clearing way for scholarships, so why does Mack want to only go the route that’s worse for the player? It seems to require that Mack not only doesn’t have the player’s best interest at heart, but is actually trying to make him worse off.

Now wait just a doggone second. You are suggesting that an SEC school cheat?

Vulcan posted- “Can you imagine what someone like Houston Nutt would do with such a loophole?”

Yeah, he might use four per year.

cody posted- “why does Mack want to only go the route that’s worse for the player?”

Well, cody, at UT (believe it or not) the AD controls the football program. I imagine the AD is insisting that Mack comply with the spirit and letter of the law.

Vulcan posted- “Given the increased attention to the oversigning issue and the fact that Alabama is a defending champion, it’s easy to see why it would be singled out.”

Another way to look at this is “Given that Bama uses the medical scholarship 12 times as much, on average, as other SEC schools, it’s easy to see why it might be singled out.”

TTR- I used Mack as an example because fearthecow did, but you’re correct, it’s a bad example to use. However, there clearly are a lot of programs that don’t follow the spirit of the law so closely, and if this is better for the player as well we should probably see more teams doing it.

No, TTR. Look at what the article actually says.

It says that Bama has offered 12 of them within the specified timeframe.

It later says that conference-wide, 25 have been accepted.

The article goes on to name three former Alabama players who have accepted the medical scholarship.

That would be three out of 25, that we know of.

It might be more.

It might be all 12.

But you’re jumping to conclusions.

I recognize the technique being used. It’s done by editors all the time, when they want the story to sound more like the one that was pitched in the staff meeting than the one that is documented.

Mack doesn’t want anyone around that doesn’t absolutely want to be there. If you are poor mouthing your situation around other people in the program it breeds a foul stench of discontent across the board.

Yeah, this approach really hasn’t worked for Saban.

Vulcan-

87 recruits the last three years! 87! 85 scholarship players on the team. Redshirts.

The article gives an explanation of how that works. You aren’t. You’re just saying that you think he’s wrong.

No. That would have been "Nick Saban’s Soft BACK Door."

Try "Nick Saban: Defensive Genius… or Wide Receiver?"

Bama fans = Baghdad Billy Joe Bobs

For what it’s worth, I had a better title for my piece.

http://crimsoncaravan.fantake.com/2010/09/24/medical-malpractice/

Vulcan is doing the hocus pocus that he accuses the the WSJ of doing. He doggedly uses the 12 and 25 numbers but refuses or can’t explain where all those extra bodies went.

69 -

I am not “doggedly” doing anything, other than paying attention to the actual words used.

Alabama offered 12.
We don’t know how many were accepted, but the number is between 3 and 12.

The SEC as a whole had 25 accepted.
We don’t know how many were offered, but we know it is at least 25.

Other BCS conferences aren’t even mentioned in comparison — but if you take that omission as positive proof of non-existence, then Austin is far more deficient in logic than I expected.

I apologize if I have erred in using the actual words from the article, instead of the most damning interpretation available.

I know we’re at the mercy of parsing the WSJ article. However, at the BC we have this amazing futuristic tool called “Google”. Using this advanced supercomputational power, I found 4 Bama medical scholarships in 2007, to help Saban make the 85 limit-

Tyrone Prothro, Aaron McDaniel, Jake Jones and Byron Walton

http://mississippistate.scout.com/a.z?s=136&p=2&c=664152

Here’s 4 from 2008-
BJ Stabler and Cody Davis

http://louisianastate.scout.com/a.z?s=107&p=2&c=732346
Zeke Knight
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=ANSB&p_theme=ansb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=11F62C87E70E90D0&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
Jermaine Preyear (looks like he was offered the medical scholarship, but opted to transfer to Alabama State instead. Evidently he was healthy enough to play there)
http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/sports/121758212844870.xml&coll=3

And 2 from 2009
Jennings Hester
http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/sports/1242465349261120.xml&coll=3

Ivan Matchett
http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/sports/1248441377163310.xml&coll=3

I googled Google news archives with “Crimson Tide football medical scholarship”. You see, it doesn’t take sleuthing to find who has gone on medical scholarship. Alabama makes the announcement themselves. I found 10 that Bama announced. Maybe there are 2 more, and maybe not.

Like Vulcan, I’m a former reporter. Also, a long-time editor. People I worked with would get a sleazy feeling from this story. The story is, as Vulcan says, soft, innuendo-loaded, incomplete in the ways he suggests, and generally worthless as a guilty/not guilty barometer of Alabama. It’s word-massaged to leave an impression the facts do not support. Its worth is severely tainted by using the number 12 — and then quoting only three players, as well as not listing the number of instances other SEC schools used medicals.

Other thoughts:

**If 12 is the correct number, it’s ludicrously high. Two in a calendar year would be high. Texas probably averages 1. I have a list of the medicals the program has used since 2004, and it’s 5-6 (I could get names if I took the time).

**Whether Alabama is guilty of this many “medicals” or not, it’s clear Saban is working the system by signing so many players. Any fan of the game knows there are instances of “running players off”. It’s regretable, but it happens, and the rules permit it. But when you sign this many YOU KNOW — and the NCAA, and coaches and ADs at other programs know — the bad smell is not coming from the trash container. In fact, offering a medical is fairer to the player than pushing him out the door (which I’m sure is also being done by Saban when medical issues can’t be found).

**Putting an annual and a total limit on medical hardships is unfair to a school that legitimately has a run of bad luck. Look at our tight end situation of late: Josh Marshall and Ian Harris got medicals, Blaine Irby may get one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if D.J. Grant got one. It’s entirely possible a team could need 3-4 in the same year, and have a half-dozen on medical grants at the same time. Documenting those things — just as SATs and GPAs and graduation progress reports are documented — would help.

Go Arkansas.

Nick Satan and the Alabama Crimson Tampons are playing by their own set of rules. That’s not acceptable. We’re Texas and we write the goddamn rules. Let’s sic our boys at the NCAA on those assholes in the SEC. The sooner the better… Nick Satan is planning a Dallas game against Michigan in 2012 for the express purpose of raiding our recruits. Mack, Deloss… show them who’s boss and stick a fat one up their SEC butts. It’s a moral imperative.

what a load of crap. Vulcan is right here.

besides the fact that none of this is illegal, those quotes are the best they could come up with? The “quoted” players sure had a platform to make strong statements/accusations and clearly didn’t.

The other angles are much more interesting, lets have the NCAA ask the SEC/Saban more about grad school/tickets/money/agents.

As TTR points out though, I haven’t seen Bama fan squirm like this since I asked Bama fan about his family tree.

hook ’em.

87 recruits in 3 years is obviously abusing the system. The medical scholarship thing is just one tool in Saban’s arsenal. Arguing about the magnitude of how it is being used is missing the point.

Also saying that Mack is guilty of running off players who don’t get playing time is missing the point. By the numbers that Texas takes, Mack isn’t planning on running guys off. Saban obviously is.

I’ll make an airline analogy (since I just got back from some international travel) – Mack is operating like an airline, signing slightly more, knowing that there are always issues that keep guys from showing up. Saban is signing enough to fill two airplanes, knowing that decisions will have to be made to kick people off the plane.

Vulcan – most people on here are agreeing that the article is deficient in it’s logic and facts. However, the one fact that they are more interested in than medical redshirts, is the 85 scholarship limit, with 87 signees in the last 3 classes. You have been constantly harping on the article saying that it is leaving out facts, without noticing that most of the readers are not as concerned with that part as where all the other scholarship players went.

I’m obviously not a big time journalism guy like yourself, but high school english told me that was called a straw man argument, and I think it’s funny you are badmouthing the article for being misleading so loudly you hope everyone doesn’t notice it is mostly a pot and kettle situation.

Now do I know that Saban is doing something dirty to usher guys out of his program to meet 85 man limits? No. But I didn’t need a trashy WSJ article to become suspicious of a man whose admirers must qualify their admiration for him with trepidation that he bends as many rules as he can to be competitive.

“Alabama found a loophole. The NCAA needs to close it by limiting schools to, say, 1 medical redshirt per year and no more than 3 active medical redshirts at any one time.”

Bingo. Same thing for grayshirting or any other tactic used. Limit it per year and over a 4 year period. That will stop this malarkey.

Stop putting words in my mouth.

@uttuck —

What you are accusing me of isn’t a straw man; it’s a non-sequitur. And it’s not even that.

I’ve said repeatedly that I am not happy about the oversigning issue, because I believe it ultimately creates ill will and hurts recruiting. (“It’s cool that you’re interested in Alabama, but Saban will cut you if you’re not developing right.”) I see it as a slash-and-burn strategy, and not the type of environment that one would create if one were developing a true dynasty mindset.

The rules are the rules, and there sure are some gray zones within them. But the way to address it is to raise the issue, and figure out how you can redefine the rules to prevent abuses. You don’t call someone a cheater based on a retroactive definition.

Now… to the article at hand.

I don’t dispute that Alabama might be taking advantage of the rules as defined, and the fact that HIPAA provides an all-too convenient cover for what could be abuse. But this article is a Monet, designed to leave the casual reader with an impression that the details don’t support.

Is Alabama putting more kids on medical scholarships that other schools? Might be?

Does Alabama have a motivation to do so, based on the size of signing classes. Absolutely (and I don’t like that.)

Are other schools cutting players outright, without giving them the medical scholarship option? Yes, they are. And this WSJ piece doesn’t reflect that reality one bit.

I’m all for solutions and proposals… but the numbers in this piece deserve to be taken with a mound of salt.

Tyrone Prothro was never going to play football again. I think anyone that saw his injury knew that.

TaylorTRoom, don’t present facts to Vulcan.

Does anyone get harassed for receiving a Pell grant…or is it just me?

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Watch how quick ppl get offended. My grandma told me a hit dog will holla.