clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Come one, come all...

...and thrill to the daredevil backpedaling of Brian Cook!

I think I should revise my position here: Saban's managed to sluff off most of his roster deadweight on medical scholarships of dubious merit and it looks like there will be no outright cuts. So this is not PURE EVIL, as previously theorized. It is still KIND OF EVIL, a highly unethical way to game the system that makes Alabama hope something like 20 Fulmer Cup points happens.

I love how he's still desperately clinging to the mere whiff of unethical behavior in this. "Gaming the system" is like, so totally wrong and stuff, even though it meant Saban found a way for seniors that most other coaches would have normally given the "look, you've got your degree, you're not going to get any playing time, and we need your scholarship..." speech to actually stay on scholarship.

Worst. Spurious Accusations. Ever.

And while I'm at it, I'll take JCCW to task a little for completely misunderstanding and using some convenient out of context quoting to paint Bama fans as naive over Brandon Lewis failing to qualify. The only thing confusing about a kid who didn't get his grades up in time to report with everyone else, and therefor most likely to be the low man on the totem pole when the grey shirts start coming out, not being in Tuscaloosa right now is that he chose to go to a JUCO instead of Hargrave (a prep school) as was previously reported. Had he gone to Hargrave, he could have joined the team after the fall, but at a JUCO he will actually have to graduate before he can transfer. It's possible Saban misspoke (as OTS pointed out), and that Lewis is still planning on heading to Hargrave, or it's also possible that prep-school just wasn't an option in a financial sense and he and his family decided the JUCO route was the one that best fit their situation. Either way, it's more than a little disingenous to start acting like we are sticking our heads in the sand over why Lewis didn't report with the rest of the freshmen.