The scholarship numbers are an issue again, so we might as well start there:

3SIB has a solid, detailed breakdown of what we know now, so head over there for a primer on the numbers and what it all means.

Confusing the matter, Kellen Williams, who many thought would greyshirt after a knee injury, still plans to report with the rest of his fellow signees:

'It depends on a physical I'll take in August, and then I'll start practicing, but not in full-pads.

'Essentially what they told me it's a medical redshirt.'

Even so, Williams plans to be here by the end of the month and enroll for the first summer session with the majority of other including players. So far he's a little ahead of schedule in his rehabilitation, and is already walking without a limp. He hopes to start running over the next few weeks, only will be doing it on campus.

Not sure if this means he'll be enrolling on his own dime or what, but it's still an interesting development.

Meanwhile, our old nemesis Brian Cook is strangely quiet on the Alabama recruiting front, possibly because he's too busy finding new targets to help deflect criticism of Fearless Leader (emphasis mine):

Lane Kiffin caused defections at Tennessee are up to a spectacular nine now, which is a lot more folk a lot faster than Rodriguez "ran off," to use the parlance of people who don't know what they're talking about. ...

Relevance to Michigan? Slight. I guess he's taking a lot of heat that might otherwise be directed at Rodriguez.

At the very least he's being honest about his motives this go 'round, especially since RichRod is quickly proving to be the kind of "snake oil salesman" he'd have you believe Nick Saban really is.  Observe:

“Stay tuned. There’s a couple guys I’m going to sit with here. Just guys that maybe if they’re not doing all their responsibilities and doing what they need to do to be part of our football program may not be back. I hope that’s not too many.”

Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't cutting players loose that aren't contributing to the team in the manner the coaches expect while still under the NCAA's scholarship cap an even bigger dick move than the purported "evil" of Saban's house cleaning?  'Cause I seem to recall someone lecturing us poor, dumb, illogical Alabama fans about how, even though "scholarships are technically one-year commitments, in practice players are guaranteed four years as long as they remain eligible and keep their noses clean."  So even though Michigan has the room to let these players stick around and get their four years, RichRod is still looking to give a few the boot for no other reason than they aren't contributing to the team in a meaningful way.  I'm with the Capstone Report on this one: Stop exploiting these scholars and let them finish their education!

On to memes that simply must die, Block U undestandably takes offense at Lee Corso's logical fallacies (and he isn't even an Alabama fan!) in defense of the BCS, namely that "we don't need a playoff because the BCS gets it right even though USC was the best team he saw last year and they would have beaten Florida given the chance."  As someone who's opposed to a college football playoff, thanks for making us look like idiots Corso.  And as an Alabama fan, let me take a moment to put this particularly odious meme to rest (emphasis mine):

"They went crazy, because they beat an Alabama team that didn't want to be there," Corso said of Utah. "They didn't beat the Alabama team that played Florida four weeks before that."

Can we please move past this?  Yes, Alabama came out flat in the first quarter.  We were a team that watched a dream season and shot at the national title slip away in one quarter of play, had to deal with the Andre Smith distractions all week, had to reshuffle the offensive line, and for the first time all season didn't really have anything to play for beyond one more win.  Yeah, they probably didn't want to be there taking on a mid-major BCS Buster in a lose-lose situation (if we win, we're supposed to, if we lose, we're a laughingstock).  But that's not a knock on Utah.  In fact, after the first quarter was over and the team realized "oh crap, these guys aren't afraid of us, we better start playing some football," the defense locked down and held the Utes to 10 points (3 of which came on a FG resulting from a recovered fumble within FG range) the rest of the way.  I'd happily wager that the Tide's downfall had more to do with losing Mike Johnson, who had slid over to LT in Smith's place, thus forcing the Tide offense to attempt a rally behind an o-line that had never even practiced in that particular grouping.  Had Andre Smith been on the field, or, at the very least, had Johnson been able to stay on the field, we would have had a good chance of rallying for the win.  But that's still not a knock on Utah.  That's a knock on Alabama.  We didn't show up, our depth was exposed, and Utah was simply too good of a team to let have those kinds of advantages.  Let this one die.

• Unfortunately, it looks like the Andre Smith fiasco is having quite an impact on the team. Several articles from today talk about that.

  Antoine Caldwell chimes in about it in this piece from Rivals/Yahoo:

  “He kind of showed remorse and apologized,” said senior center Antoine Caldwell. “It’s just one of those things. It happened. It’s adversity we’ve got to deal with.”

  Words about the situation from Terrence Cody were infinitely more shocking and really has me freaking out a bit

  'Practice was not real great yesterday,' junior nose guard Terrence Cody said. 'I think it was kind of different because he wasn't out there. The tempo was different; we didn't have much tempo yesterday. That's what we have to do, we have to buckle down and get over our loss (of Smith).'

  Hopefully that was just a temporary setback and the guys are firing on ally cylinders today. Reading Rolando McClain's thoughts from the same article about it makes me incredibly frustrated with Smith (emphasis mine):

  'I'm not in that situation and I pray to God that I'll get to be in that situation one day, but we have great compliance guys. They've told us over and over what you need to do and what you should do when agents contact you, so I can just do the smart thing and stay away from them. By next year, if I need an agent for some reason, then I'll wait until the appropriate time to have one.'

• Getting back to this game and the stuff we can control, TideSports.com has an article up about Utah center Zane Taylor who has the task of handling The Legend on Friday. Taylor acknowledges that Cody will have to be double teamed, but they seem rather confident in their ability to stop him:

  'On film it looks like a lot of other guys have hard a hard time with him, but I have all the confidence in the world with myself and the rest of the O-line.'

• Nice article from the Salt Lake Tribune discussing our obsessiveness as a fanbase. My personal favorite quote from the story is from Jim McElwain:

  "The passion .?.?. almost to a religious standpoint" for Alabama football is what strikes Jim McElwain, who spent the bulk of his coaching career at Eastern Washington and Montana State of the Big Sky Conference.

  "You can't prepare yourself, until you're living in it," added McElwain, the Tide's first-year offensive coordinator.

• Here's a transcript from a recent Utah press conference. And the transcript from ours. I have to say that I'm not too terribly fond of the fact that the curfews have been as late as 2am, but that's obviously been cut out by this point.

Here is your Boxing Day edition of the Tide Roundup:

Sony Blu-ray player
Sony Walkman digital MP3 player
Custom watch

A lot of other bowls give a greater amount of stuff, but not nearly as cool (e.g. getting a pair of Crocs, a fitted hat and luggage tags for appearing in the BCS title game.) My personal favorite is the custom belt buckle at the Texas Bowl. For whatever reason, the Cotton Bowl is the only bowl that wouldn't disclose the contents of their gift pack before the players actually receive them.

Oh yeah, am I the only one that hates the partnership between Rivals and Yahoo? I could used to sift through the story list for the day and click away to my heart's delight and now there are tons of stories that are inaccessible due to needing a Rivals.com subscription (22 of 45 yesterday required a subscription.) Annoying.

"Do I think I'm ready? We're going to find out," said Taylor. "Cody's a great player and they have a great defensive front four. We're going to have to play our best game of the season to be effective against them."

• It's good to see that the team and coaches aren't taking Utah as lightly as some of the fans are. John Parker Wilson has gone so far as to say this season will essentially be a bust if the Tide doesn't roll in New Orleans:

  "We've had a great season up to this point, something we'll all remember," Wilson said. "But if we don't go out and win this game, it's going to be all for nothing."

  "If we can go out and win this game, win a Sugar Bowl, win a BCS game, it'll kind of wrap everything up," Wilson said. "If we don't, we'll be just another team, another season."

  Coach Nick Saban had this to say about the Utes:

  "This is a lot better team than everybody thinks." He then paused and repeated the line for additional impact. "This is as good a team as we've played all year long, in terms of what they do," Saban said. "And I can promise you that.

  Some Utah fans misinterpreted Nick Saban's earlier comments about being the only team in the country to go undefeated in a real BCS conference as a slight against their team. I'm pretty sure CNS' quote above erases any doubt about that earlier statement.

• The Huntsville Times has a nice story about Utah running back Matt Asiata and his wife Tangi.
• There have been a lot of questions around here about who will be QB next year. According to Coach Saban, it's an open position and will not be inherited. Glad to see that there'll be competition for it. That should drive all of the potential starters and make them all better hopefully. Here's his actual words on the matter:

We will have competition for the position next year," Saban said. "(McElroy) has the most experience right now, but we're certainly going to let everybody compete for it and make a decision about who can do the best job of helping us win.

• PJ Fitzgerald and Leigh Tiffin talk about squaring off against Utah punter/kicker Louie Sakoda who was a finalist for both the Ray Guy and Lou Groza Awards. Both of our guys are going to have their work cut out for them. Sakoda is obviously pretty awesome at both punting and kicking.

A whopping THREE of them! Hey, it's the offseason, cut me some slack.

First up, the Pigskin Podcast has their ACC edition up. They discussed the Tigers and the rest of the ACC with Clemson beat writer Greg Wallace. I'll be on the show this week talking about Alabama and the SEC (I believe it will go up Wednesday).

SMQ has all your "put up or shut up" info on Tommy Bowden.

Finally, here's a good article on the questions Clemson must answer this fall.

I'm sure y'all have all seen these by now, but the "after" pics of Rolando McClain following his motorcycle accident? Scary.

Why yes that is our only experienced returning linebacker. Why do you ask?

D.J. Hall is doing his best to overcome the bad rap he got during the NFL Draft, and so far so good:

Unfortunately for Hall the Giants are pretty well stacked at receiver, so barring a serious infestation of the injury bug or some amazing performances in camp, he has a hard fight ahead of him to get on their roster.

Just a couple of quick hits while I have a moment:

Rolando McClain did his best Ben Roethlisberger impression yesterday, laying down his new motocycle and sliding underneath a moving SUV. Thankfully he's unhurt save a few minor scratches:

I guess the Strip isn't the only thing we have to be concerned with anymore.

VHT wide receiver commit Destin Hood might not be headed our way after all:

According to the article, he's listed as a Top 100 prospect, which means big money if he's taken, so it's hard to blame the kid.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but I've just been swamped at work and haven't had enough time to really do anything properly other than eat a lot of junk food and not get enough sleep. There are a couple of things that have happened this week, though, that I want to comment on.

First, Auburn fans really shouldn't try and talk shit about the misspelling of Antoine Caldwell's name.

And that's not to mention Auburn having the king of all embarassing photos to their credit.

Second, the scholarship brouhaha just won't die, as Rappaport went and got Saban all riled up at the A-Day press conference over it. SMQ has a good post up on it, which naturally references the great Bama/Brian Cook kerfluffle of a few months ago, but even he seems to be missing the point here. Saban and his staff are not stupid. They are all great recruiters and they all know how to make the numbers work without negatively affecting their ability to be great recruiters, i.e. not screwing a bunch of kids over and getting a reputation for being unable or unwilling to live up to their word. I suppose we're all just going to have to agree to disagree about the "sketchiness" of greyshirting (personally, if they're upfront with the recruit about that possibility and he still signs, then it doesn't sound sketchy to me), but as far as I'm concerned this is a non-story until there's some sort of proof that shady dealings are going on to make room for the incoming class. And by shady dealings, I mean things like this, not being honest enough to encourage a kid that hasn't played and isn't likely to play more than a snap on senior day that seeking some playing time elsewhere might be a good idea. Is SMQ right in thinking that coaches should be more transparent with the public and, more importantly, their players and recruits on how they are doing this and that official steps should be taken to guarantee that transparency? Yeah, he is. But until there's a reason to single out Nick Saban as the poster child for what's wrong with college football recruiting then this is all a load of crap.

Update [2008-4-17 21:59:6 by Todd]:

Picture Me Rollin also has an excellent read on the perception of Saban by the national media that's worth checking out.