Clint Lamb
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One of the things that has made Nick Saban’s success sustainable is his ability to adapt. With the NCAA’s new transfer rule, Saban and the rest of the Alabama coaching staff will need to make a few more changes to stay atop the college football world.
This past Thursday, the NCAA Division I Council finally approved the one-time transfer exception. That is going to allow college athletes to change teams without having to sit out a year, which is a significant change to the past.
The college football world as we know it could be changing. We don’t fully understand the impact of this decision — and won’t for some time — but we know it is going to affect roster management for most programs.
For Saban, he’s all about taking new things and turning them into an advantage. The seven-time national championship winning coach was originally against the hurry up, RPO-styled offenses, but he knew it was around to stay. Now Alabama can do it with the best of them.
With this transfer rule, Saban plans on making it into a similar advantage. During a post-practice Zoom call on Thursday, he discussed the new rule and how it will affect things moving forward.
“We have thought about a strategy that we’re going to use,” Saban said, via BamaInsider. “You’ve heard me speak about this before, but now that it is a rule, we’re going to adapt to it and make it an advantage for us.
“I think what’s going to happen as you see how often in a lot of leagues, you know the good players go to a good team and the bad players leave good teams because they’re not playing. So is that going to make the rich get richer? I don’t know. You can decide that.”
It’s a fair point.
If players are leaving a place like Alabama, it’s normally because they haven’t lived up to the hype. There are exceptions, of course, but that’s typically the case. If a player such as Jabril Cox is leaving North Dakota State for LSU, it’s normally because he’s been a star power on the lower level and wants to prove it on the big stage.
Like Saban said, thing could actually help the rich get richer in some ways. We’ll have to wait and see how things play out.
Follow Clint Lamb on Twitter @ClintRLamb.
Yep, Alabama, for instance could use the lesser stature schools as a farm system. And coaches on the hot seat could see their top players bolt for a winning team, thus making the hot seats hotter. Instability.
Kids. Now we allow them to dictate their demands. Commitment, a thing of the past. I lived through sitting out a year, 2 years if you transferred in the same conference. When I worked with recruits, as Director of Academics, I always told the kid and parents; go on all your visits, go home and write out the pros/cons and save it. When the recruiting is done, go over all the options and pick the best fit, academically, athletically and socially.
But today, kids will hold a press conference to announce their selection and go into the transfer portal the next year. So it is not about education, it is about themselves. It get harder every year to follow my teams as players are there and gone.