Alabama LB Glenn Harbin has joined the baseball team as a pitcher and will be practicing with them all spring. He is apparently tossing fast balls close to 90mph already. He's not off the football team and could play both, but I think he would miss some important S&C time by practicing with the baseball team and may focus more on baseball where he may have a brighter future. :?:
KP, it seems as if two of the writers for the Birmingham paper have an adversarial relationship with Saban.....is that a new thing or has their always been bad blood with these guys? Kevin Scarbinsky and the other guy Solomon are probably not going to be invited to Saban's Xmas party.....they have been outspokenly critical at least this year.....is it unusual for the home town guys to give the Bama coach a hard time, or just status quo.....have the Birminham papers historically more pro-Auburn and critical of Bama? I agree with their point, Saban and Bama have nothing to hide and what they are doing is clearly within the rules....but being the only school to hide the info doesn't look good and does not serve them well... http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2011/02/scarbinsky_alabamas_dont-tell.html
I've said it before and this is another example. Long gone are the days when the iconic supercoaches like Schembechler, Hayes, Bryant, Paraseghian, Wilkinson etc. ran programs that were untouchable.....untouchable with the local gendarmes, the campus wannabe police, the NCAA and the local or national hacks as well. There was no internet......no ESPN......nothing like that around to drag these guys through the mud. All the oldtimer sports fans just love to believe that these icons of the game had squeaky clean programs and more importantly that the players themselves were above scandal......or minor lawbreaking, etc.... To borrow a phrase from the NFL Today....to all of that kind of grandiose, delusional thinking I say...."Come on Man"..... :wink:
Do you have evidence to the contrary? If so, let's see it. If not, it's another example of your mouth being about 2 blocks ahead of your brain.
... and before you say anything to Sid, he is working off of facts. We have asked you for evidence before and you had to back down.
No.....I'll readily admit at present...I have not researched it but I'll bet that I could....someone has probably done a tell all kind of book/story etc. in the case of several programs I mentioned. I think it's quite a stretch....maybe even preposterous to think that all of these modern day behavioral problems that all college programs seem to face today just started in the past 25 years. Maybe that's what you and Sid believe......I don't. I just contend that college football programs in years past.....were fortresses created by bastions of loyalty and they were able to keep their dirty laundry in the laundry room more often than not. One thing that stands out for sure is all of the drinking and petty MJ charges that dominate the news sometimes. I do not condone drunk driving for these kids I am just saying that drinking on college campuses is not a new wave phenomena. With regard to the NCAA.....the methods of reporting are much more intense.....much more high tech and discovery is probably a lot easier than it was 45 years ago for instance. And I'll also wager that there wasn't the "hungry shark after bloodied meat" mentality in the national sports media like ESPN and others for instance in 1965 like there is these days. Those are my premises.....premises only but you decide what you believe.
I don't believe one way or another. I don't know. I only know that before people say that the world is flat, they ought to have evidence to back it up.
That was the question......I gave my opinion.....just an opinion. It's the same opinion of why the Detroit Free Press "broke" the story on RR at UM with the extra practices....etc which ultimately put him in an unescapable hole in Ann Arbor. Hmmmmm.....I wonder if the gruff taskmaster himself General BO "George Patton" Schembechler ever had an extra practice or two. Woody Hayes?? Never...... :wink: :lol:
BuckeyeT, These writers seem to write whatever is controversial. Kind of like Finebaum, in this state saying something bad about Alabama makes 1/2 of the state mad and 1/2 of the state happy and sells very many papers. Saban is caustic with sportswriters and sometimes fans. I think he is a football wonk, and doesn't care much for the PR side of things. I think a key point of the article was that Saban's real "crime" was winning. That is why I have been posting stories about individuals transferring, or switching to baseball or leaving the football program for whatever reason. These are real, not just suppositions. There was a table put on the forum with no explanation. I have given a couple of examples of players leaving teams and the reasons they give. I know a couple of Alabama players have complained about receiving medical scholarships but I have not heard of any player saying that his scholarship was arbitrarily pulled by Alabama. Have you? :?
No, I have not heard of any player saying that his schollie has been pulled arbitrarily. In fact I'm certain that there is always some reason to yank a schollie......and fwiw, I agree about newswriters these days, the more spectacular, the more controversy, the more sales.....speaking of which that Finebaum character is a real piece of work.