Roll 'Bama Roll, an Alabama Crimson Tide community

Nice article on our favorite coach. Don't believe any report you hear about him going to another job.

From RollTide.com: Following practice, the University of Alabama's Million Dollar Band took part in teaching the fight song, "Yea Alabama," to the freshmen. See Coach Saban, Coach Cochran, and the rest of the team sing the fight song, as well.

That venerable British champion of the laissez-faire, The Economist, has a story from this week's issue that features the picture of Coach Saban getting the Gatorade in the National Championship. Huzzah! Right? Well, not exactly. Regrettably, they seem to have missed the point. The story has to do with the problem of gambling on sports (a hot topic in the UK due to match fixing allegations in the sport of cricket) and how the practice of paying off players is relatively absent in the United States -- possibly due to the fact the players are compensated sufficiently by their regular paychecks. So it makes little sense to feature the photo of a college coach whose charges are strictly limited in how they are remunerated by the NCAA. Moreover, it's downright baffling given Coach Saban's active stance in regards to the problem of agents acting in violation of the NCAA's restrictions for player-agent contact and the rules laid down by the NFLPA. But what do you expect? They're Brits.

Brophy, over at Cripes! Get back to fundamentals... has a nice hat tip today to our recent effort to examine The Process by looking at the numbers. But, more importantly, he's got a great breakdown of all those technical things Coach Saban was saying during the workouts shown on ESPNU's Alabama All Access last week. Hop on over and study up before the full show hits the airwaves tomorra.

The NCAA has created a database of coaches that measures the academic performance of their respective teams by year. I dug up the Academic Progress Rate numbers for each of the SEC head coaches and whipped up a table and chart over at Team Speed Kills. Turns out the 2009 Crimson Tide did quite well, only eclipsed by Florida and Vanderbilt.

"[Rolando McClain told Greg Papa, the Raider's radio play-by-play announcer] of how Saban stretched his mind to places where he didn't know he was capable of going. He told Papa that Saban taught him how to slow the game down in his mind and see it how others cannot."

Here is the link to Steve Greenberg's interview with Coach Saban in The Sporting News. Yes. This is the one that got all the Dolphins stalwarts worked up earlier this week. But there is a heck of a lot more to this piece than that one topic. Click on over, give it a read and let us know your thoughts below.

Coach Saban's effort to reverse the ban on "bumps" floundered at the league meetings in Destin this week. Once upon a time, coaches were allowed to assess prospects from a distance during the spring, but personal contact was limited to simple exchanges known as "bumps." This was barred after a bunch of folks got their panties in a twist over Saban's recruiting efforts in South Florida. Saban insists the access is critical for player evaluation but other coaches, notably Auburn's Gene Chizik disagree, calling it a "grey area." In fact, Chizik seems to argue that the prohibition on head coaches recruiting in the spring is actually an advantage: "I enjoy that part of it," he told the Montgomery Advertiser. "I enjoy the part where I can get some things done in-house on campus with my own football team -- spend some time with them while everyone else is out."

The always entertaining Spencer Hall over at EDSBS offers a word of warning as a Florida Gator fan on the perils that await the fanbase of a team coming off a National Championship.

SB Nation's KC Chiefs blog Arrowhead Nation offers an observation on how NFL minded coaches - notably Nick Saban and Monte Kiffin - have helped several of the team's rookies get a leg up on the competition in mini camp.