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Rolando McClain Is Not Good at Motorcycling

WEEEEE, this seems like an exceptionally good and safe idea. Have I mentioned I've only had this thing for like two hours? I must be good at motorcycling, boy howdy, what do you mean "watch out for the ground"?

Alabama linebacker Rolando McClain is the latest athlete to come in for a round of media clucking after bashing himself in a motorcycle incident:
Alabama coach Nick Saban said linebacker Rolando McClain was involved in a motorcycle accident but sustained only minor injuries.

The sophomore was released from a hospital in his hometown of Decatur after the accident Thursday.
Cue the usual "I can't believe this guy could be so stupid" muttering from concerned citizens, but more important around these parts is how sucky McClain is at riding a motorcycle. He got in an accident Thursday, right? Guess when he bought the motorcycle?
A friend who was with the player moments before the accident told The Decatur Daily that McClain had bought the motorcycle earlier Thursday.
Rolando McClain + shiny new motorcycle + matter of hours = road pizza.

Saban Gets Around Rule Made to Reign Him In

The problem with creating rules to try to force all college football coaches to be lazy recruiters, is that some of them just won't. When the NCAA tried to "fix" the so-called "bump" rule, they did in in a way that makes sense only to those who value, for example, duck hunting over college recruiting. Instead of allowing coaches to evaluate players during the "Spring Evaluation Period", they have to sit back on their campuses and wait for someone else to tell them how great some player is.

FanHouse's own Brian Cook described the rule this way:
It looks like the NCAA is moving to lessen the impact of the "bump" rule and provide a level playing field for coaches from enthusiastic frequent NCAA violators to guys who can't be bothered to get out of bed in March
Of course, the new NCAA rule "leveled the playing field" by catering to the laziest common denominator. It's about like making the no-huddle offense illegal because some teams don't have the personnel to run it. Or canceling a playground kickball game because you don't want to hurt the feelings of the kid who gets picked last. What most will be unsurprised to learn is that artificially induced slothfulness doesn't work.

Pro Football Weekly Hates D.J. Hall

From inside the pages of the venerable Pro Football Weekly 2008 Draft Guide:
49ers head coach Mike Nolan told PFW to watch out for this kid. We did. He stinks. Hall was virtually non-existent all week, hardly making a peep. He supposedly was nursing an injury, but it didn't stop him from playing in the [Senior Bowl].
Ouch.

Rarely do you see respected publications straight up say a player stinks. Bonus points for throwing a coach under the bus. Rough day at the office, perhaps?

Alabama Shows Off Passing Game at A-Day

In front of the second-largest crowd of the spring games (78,200 according to the half-time announcement), Alabama threw the ball early and often.

I made my way down to Tuscaloosa for A-Day this year, and what I saw didn't surprise me in the least. The traffic to Tuscaloosa and around town was not quite as bad as a typical game day. The "Kick-off on the Quad" was scaled back, but still well attended, and the campus was swarming with crimson and white, with nary a sign of another teams fans to be found. It was a thing of beauty, really.

Inside the stadium, Alabama looked like a young team with a lot of talent, exactly what everyone expected. John Parker Wilson seemed to have improved in the off-season and Leigh Tiffin split the uprights from 44 yards out (both things fans should be relieved to hear).

Coach Nick Saban, who spent most of the scrimmage standing behind the offense, managed to get in the way of one play (pictured at right) as John Parker Wilson scrambled from pressure. He didn't go down, but it was certainly a funny situation nonetheless..

Les Miles Now Makes More Than Nick Saban

This is a good week for LSU coach Les Miles. He's certainly basking in LSU's BCS National Championship. He's miraculously not at beloved alma mater Michigan while they endure bad press for questionable academic practices within the athletic department.

And he got a big raise.

So big, in fact, that it makes him the highest-paid coach in the SEC by $1,000 over rival and former LSU coach Nick Saban.
Saban, who is guaranteed $3.75 million, was the SEC's highest-paid coach. Miles' new contract states he will be paid no less than the highest-paid coach at a public university in the conference, plus $1,000.
Sometimes in the SEC there's no need to be sneaky when it feels so good to be obvious. This is one bold, blunt example. I guess it pays to not be able to pronounce the word Arkansas so long as you are holding that glass football.

Side note for LSU fans: that's an AP National Championship Trophy in the picture. USC won one in 2004, you won one in 2008. Just so you know that we know that your coach knows it counts. That is all.

Tuscaloosa Police Be Ridin' Dirty

Of course, "ridin' dirty" has a looser definition in Alabama, where it can encompass having the audacity to put an Auburn license plate on the front of your cruiser while patrolling the Alabama campus, as seen here:



That picture comes from the blog Alabama Gameday, who also links to a thread on the TideSports fourm where a member says he emailed the Tuscaloosa chief of police and "addressed the issue of credibility (and the growing lack thereof), and asked that he check into it and have it removed if possible." The poster says the chief responded by having the tag removed from the unit.

Now, this all might seem kind of petty until you understand the growing unease of an Alabama fan base that has seen more players arrested (8) than wins (7) in the year since Nick Saban took over the program. Tuscaloosa seems to be one of the college towns where arresting a student-athlete is a trophy of sorts for the local po-po; a statement that anybody is fair game, but especially those who make headlines. That may or may not be a fair assessment, but it's a growing concern in places where high-profile students seem to get in more trouble than the average student.

Consider, however: if the Auburn-fan cop with the Tiger plate on his cruiser wasn't targeting Bama players before, he sure could be now that he's been singled out himself.

Can Your Exhibition Game Do This?

Many people look upon Alabama's NCAA-record 92,000 attendance at last year's spring game in horror. Me? I beam with pride.

College football fans are rabid, their taste for the game insatiable. Meaningless spring exhibitions can be cause for 2% of the state population to show up and watch red-on-red violence.

Anyway, the school is going all-in this year, extending the festivities another day with an Alan Jackson warm-up concert and pep rally the night before. Here's guessing 'Tide coach Nick Saban's had more than his share of "5-o-clock somewhere" moments the past year (mostly self-inflicted). Should be a hell of a two-day party, all the more meaningful so many months before the season begins in earnest and well before the recruits have even hit campus.

College football, gotta love it.

(H/T: The Wizard of Odds)

Tide Lineman Leaves Team

Alabama offensive lineman BJ Stabler has opted to leave the team, citing chronic knee injuries. He'll spend the rest of his time at Alabama on medical scholarship and should graduate in August. While it's never good to see a player like Stabler go, he spent so much time injured (or recovering from injuries) that he never really had a chance to make an impact in the way that he could have.

Those "six" players that caused such a big stink have dwindled to "four", and that's if Tim Gayle's "number-crunching" is accurate. We're now getting down to a range in which the scholarship cap is within the margin of error for the type of guesswork Gayle was involved in.

It's also just another example of why getting all preachy about assumption-laden hypotheticals is a bad idea.

Then again, if things continue up at this rate, Alabama won't have anyone on scholarship when the A-Day Game rolls around.


(Hat-tip: Roll 'Bama Roll and Capstone Report)


Previously at FanHouse:

Saban Made Him Do It: 'Bama DE Arrested


Over the weekend, Alabama defensive end Jeremy Elder was arrested for (allegedly) robbing two students:
According to the UA Police Web site, two male UA students reported to UAPD on Saturday night that they were the victims of a robbery. The students reported that an unknown male approached them as they were walking to their vehicle in the Small Group Housing parking lot shortly after 11 p.m.

The unknown male presented a handgun and took cash from one of the students. The unknown male left on foot in a southerly direction. Neither student was injured in the incident.
If true, this was certainly a poor decision on the part of Elder (to put it lightly) and it's disappointing to see yet another college athlete ruin a tremendous opportunity. That aside, if there were ever a convenient time for this sort of thing, this is it. In fact, it's almost too convenient.

Snake Oil: More On Over-signing

It started with a legitimate concern mixed with an unsubstantiated pot-shot at Nick Saban by FanHouse's Brian Cook. I replied, and so did a whole bunch of other Alabama bloggers. Brian took Round Two to his personal blog, MGOBLOG, and his post is most certainly neither work-safe nor child-friendly. The one good thing about Brian's post, is he more clearly enumerates his points. The bad thing is that he failed to do so without resorting to something on the order of an ad hominem every other paragraph, which tends to make him sound like a petulant child [Enter: The FanHouse Baby] as opposed to the college football analyst that he is known in the blog world to be.

Both sides have some valid points, which will be addressed in turn. The sole exception being the whine that Alabama's recruiting class shouldn't be ranked #1... the only suitable reply to which is pictured at right.