Maybe this rowdy fan blogger from Michigan will wait next time before roundly blasting a coach for the "sin" of oversigning players. Probably not though.
I imagine he'll keep going on about all the wrongs he imagines other people must be suffering and blaming Saban for every medical scholarship that ever happens at any school. Either that, or he'll totally ignore this story, as it doesn't fit with his "Saban as a snakeoil salesman" motif.
Emphasis mine, obviously, but that one line, unlike the vast majority of those who have commented on this matter, at least shows that someone else understands why we blew up over the whole thing in the first place; Cook presupposed Nick Saban's sins based on his own low opinion of him, then either ignored the fact that those sins never materialized or flat out manufactured them to make it seem that they had, all while wrapping himself in the mantle of the aggrieved commentator that's "just trying to bring light to something really shady that happens during recruiting." We're not denying that he knowingly oversigned, we're not denying that oversigning has the potential for unfair dealings, and we're certainly not denying that, given Saban's reputation as a hard ass tyrant, the perception that he could very well throw a bunch of kids under a bus for better players wouldn't cross a lot of people's minds. What we are (and were) arguing is that those preconceived notions were unfair and nothing more than pure conjecture, and that before any assaults should be made on him, the Alabama football program, or even the practice of oversigning, we should all wait and see how it plays out and then make our own judgements. We've all made them by now and, like I said, I'm sure we won't be changing anyone's minds, but at least we can look at our own example and say "Saban didn't do anything "evil," he knows how to crunch the numbers, and he worked it out without ruining his reputation as a great recruiter by dealing unfairly with his current players," and that's good enough for me.