Alabama Football: Nick Saban no fan of proposed transfer rule changes

You’ve never had to guess where Nick Saban stands on certain issues, and recently, the man who may be the best coach in college football weighed in on a possible change in rules for transfers.

There may not be anything in college football, outside of the game itself, that’s more interesting than a Nick Saban press conference. During the first day of the annual SEC meeting, the Alabama Crimson Tide head coach stepped to the podium to address the media. One of the topics was transfers, particularly a possible rule change concerning how graduate transfers will be handled.

Here’s what we may be seeing if changes are made. Graduate transfers will be required to apply for a waiver to move from one program in the SEC to another. In the case that athletes are looking to transfer to an SEC school from another conference, they’ll need to, at minimum, meet the university’s academic standards prior to graduation.

Here’s what Coach Saban had to say

According to Ben Jones from TideSports.com, he was clearly unhappy during the spring meetings about transfers within the conference.

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“What is the intent of the rule to start with? I think the intent of the rule to start with was the fact that somebody was changing schools for academic reasons. ” He continued. “That was the intent of the rule as I understood it. That’s why we allowed people to transfer to other places. Now, that doesn’t matter. So that’s not the intent of the rule anymore. I’ve never been in favor of free agency before in our league, I don’t think that’s a good thing, I don’t think I’ll ever be for it.”

He didn’t stop there. “I think we would benefit, we would benefit as much as anyone in our league if you said you could transfer (without having to be concerned with academics.) Kentucky’s got a good player, we’ll go see if we can get him to come to Alabama. Why would we want that? Why do we need that? How does that help the integrity of what we are trying to do as a conference or a league? I’m not for free agency in our conference.”

Rules involving early signing periods and high school assistants were discussed as well

At one point, the discussion shifted to rules that would prevent the hiring of high school assistants to the support staff of a university. Saban weighed in on that as well. He stated “If someone didn’t give me an opportunity as a graduate assistant, I wouldn’t be where I am today. It’s a very difficult profession to get started in, so I’m always for that.”

In terms of the early signing period he was equally as candid. “Having it in December is way better than having it before senior year. So if we are going to have an early signing period, this is the best date to have but the fear is, it will become the signing day. By having an early signing day, everything revolves around Dec. 20-22, whenever it is, and everyone wants to take visits during the season which is not the best time to take visits.”

Again, there’s nothing like a Nick Saban press conference.

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