Nick Saban would recruit one-and-done players

It should come as no surprise that Alabama football coach Nick Saban and Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari are friends and enjoy mutual respect and admiration. Each has reached the top of his profession while thumbing their noses at the national cognoscenti in the mainstream sports media. Both recognize that the lifeblood of their program’s success is the ability to recruit the best athletes available and mold their talents into an unstoppable dreadnought.

It should also come as no surprise that neither man particularly likes the rules he’s forced to work under. In many cases, the voluminous NCAA Handbook contains by-laws specifically crafted to thwart an advantage that men like Saban and Calipari have obtained through their own ingenuity. Given a set of rules, the two championship coaches developed their strategies and tactics to sign the best recruits. Competitors complained and the rules were changed, only to see the smartest coaches adapt their methods and stay ahead anyway.

So it should come as no surprise that if the NFL changed its policies to mirror those of the NBA and created an environment where the only impediment to entering the draft was the date stamped on a birth certificate, Saban would adapt and continue to recruit the absolute best players he could find without regard to whether they plan to stay for two, three or four years in his program.

Saban would recognize the dilemma he faces.

"I don't like the rules," he would say. "I want Trent Richardson to come back and be my running back next year. It's what I really want. There are only two solutions to the problem. Either I can recruit players who are not as good as the players I'm recruiting, or I can try to convince guys that should leave to stay for me."

Saban recognizes that most of the players he recruits have NFL aspirations. The first time he convinces a player like Trent Richardson—or Mark Ingram before him—to delay the start of his NFL career to play one more year at Alabama will be the last time. The next Trent Richardson would sign with the coach that represents the quickest path to a first round draft pick and Saban’s reign as college football’s best coach would be over. He’s too smart for that, and so is John Calipari.

It was Calipari who said almost the same thing when asked about his recruiting just prior to the Wildcats playing with their Kansas Jayhawks victims and devouring them in the NCAA championship game Monday night. 

Calipari didn’t make the rules he operates under and he doesn’t like them. Saban doesn’t like the rules he operates under either, but if the rules changed and Saban had to adapt again, he would. If the NFL changed its rules such that Saban could win his fourth championship overall and third at Alabama by recruiting players he’d never see again after hoisting the crystal ball, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

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Lexington Burning

Police arrested dozens and medical personnel treated dozens of others for injuries during last night’s rowdy celebration of the Kentucky Wildcats’ national championship victory in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament.

As events unfolded during the night, the Twittersphere was treated to a live scanner feed of the Lexington Police Department. What followed were some of the most fearfully entertaining hours of live police radio and Twitter users’ updates on the #LexingtonPoliceScanner hashtag.

What follows are some of the images posted to the feed, along with a bonus video at the end.

As of sunrise today, police and fire crews were still taking reports of couches and other household objects on fire.

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UK’s Calipari predicts demise of NCAA athletics oversight

In a wide-ranging, deep interview with SportingNews’ Mike DeCourcey, Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari covers a lot of ground. But the coach who has had two former teams’ appearances in the NCAA Final Four vacated due to rules violations saved his boldest prediction for the league that stripped him of those honors.

Calipari thinks the “big boys” of college athletics—the major conferences and their member schools—will soon get fed up with the bureaucracy of the NCAA and break away from the league. He also scoffs at the notion that the NCAA has the student-athlete’s best interests in mind, a statement that is sure to raise some ire in Indianapolis.

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SN: Something people use against you a lot are the vacated Final Fours. One thing we wondered, how do the players who were on those teams feel about that designation?

CALIPARI: I wouldn’t be surprised if the Memphis kids come back and sue the NCAA. Those guys are saying, “We earned those wins. ... None of us knew anything about anything, Coach. That’s wrong. Why are they punishing me and the number of wins I had?” Like, Antonio Anderson and Robert Dozier had the most wins of anyone over a four-year period, but they take away 38.

They’re not going to be around long. The NCAA will not. Before I retire from coaching, they will no longer oversee college athletics. They will, but it won’t be the four power conferences—they’ll be on their own. And the main thing is, do you really care about these kids? They’ll get mad that I say it. The NCAA Tournament, for example. It’s more about the selection committee getting on TV, everybody getting their tickets on the aisle, down low, all the parties they go to, the traveling. But we don’t take the parents of the participants. But they take their kids and their families.

The officials will get better hotels than some of their teams. And I know it for a fact. The decisions they make on the $2,000 (expense allowance for student-athletes)—it should have been $4,000. It’s a stipend. It’s not salary. It’s not “pay-for-play.” It’s a stipend. It’s expenses. And then schools vote against it. All this stuff piles up to where people are going to say, “Enough’s enough.”

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The environment described by Calipari is a primary reason why the coaches, administrators and commissioners of the power conferences want absolutely nothing to do with a major college football playoff run by the NCAA.

They are presently outsourcing their postseason to the bowls, allowing the bowl executives to enjoy all of the perks Calipari says the NCAA officials get from March Madness. Once the powers-that-be get their arms around the situation and figure out a way to in-source the football postseason, the NCAA will no longer be needed and the bowls’ power over the postseason will be greatly diminished.

At that point, those powers-that-be will start to wonder: what’s the point of remaining in the behemoth NCAA? They can create their own playoff system, negotiate with bowls to provide consolation prizes for programs that don’t make the cut and accept competitive bids from venues seeking to host playoff games.

League President Mark Emmert has to see the handwriting on the wall, too. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be spending so much energy and making the rubber chicken circuit trying to convince people that he’s trying to reform the way the NCAA conducts business.

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Uh oh: Someone is selling a Kentucky – Anthony Davis T-Shirt on EBay

There’s not much a school can do to prevent stuff like this from showing up, but it is an NCAA violation to use a current student-athlete’s likeness or name to sell a commercial product or service.

The school will have to issue a cease and desist order and as long as Davis doesn’t know about this enterprise, he’s in the clear.

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