The Saban-Paul exchange today

Nick Saban is the best coach maybe ever in the game, and by the time he retires, and by the way he takes care of himself and how disciplined he is in everything he does, that may be another 10 years, and he should go down as the greatest football coach in the history of college football. He loves coaching football and does a better job than anyone has ever done at it in my personal opinion.

But his overreaction today to Paul Finebaum’s highly pertinent questions about not suspending Cam Robinson and Hootie Jones for the opener against Southern Cal, and really they should be suspended three games I believe, is beyond ridiculous and frankly incredibly arrogant. Paul asked the tough questions which were the number one questions that should have been asked in the Media Days press conference. This team’s going to be very good, it could win another national title possibly, Saban’s fifth at Alabama and sixth overall if the quarterback comes through and the offensive line gets its act together, but Alabama has a very good chance to be playing New Year’s Eve in the playoffs. There are no guarantees with a gauntlet of games to go through before they can even think about that starting with game one versus USC in Arlington, Texas. The SEC is a battlefield every Saturday and Bama has some question marks heading into the season. The cupboard is full but not yet refined. We’re just getting started. But they are always there at the end and I expect them to be again this year unless there is a rash of injuries to key players, which can happen some years. Saban also warns about complacency and he tries to never let his players get complacent. It’s happened before to Alabama teams that have won the national championship under Saban the following year, but he does a remarkable job of preparing his teams. Still LSU is very good, A&M is going to be very good, Auburn is going to b be good, Arkansas, Ole Miss, and State are all good. On the East side, Tennessee has an outstanding team, Florida is good, Georgia will be competitive, Vanderbilt it better and South Carolina, Missouri and Kentucky are all capable. And that doesn’t even include teams like Ohio State, Clemson, Michigan, Michigan State, Oklahoma, TCU, Texas is better, teams in the PAC 12 like Stanford, Oregon, USC, UCLA and Utah. The list goes on and on. Nobody is entitled to this. Saban understands that as well or better than anybody in college football. No guarantees this year for sure. 

So the questions to me going into this press conference that needed to be asked were who’s the leader in the clubhouse for quarterback? How’s the offensive line shaping up, how are Bo Scarbrough and Damian Harris progressing this summer, who are freshmen who can make an impact this fall, who are your leaders on defense, and, most importantly, what are the consequences for Cam Robinson and Hootie Jones? Particularly Cam because he’s maybe the most important player on this team outside of Blake Barnett, Cooper Bateman or Jalen Hurts, whichever one of those guys who will be under center against USC Sept. 3rd.

The key question to me is about Cam Robinson and why he won’t be suspended. Paul showed the courage to ask Saban about that, and it takes courage because Saban goes ballistic if one if there is one question that gets in his way. As tough an exterior as he has and his attitude that I don’t give  a rip what you think, reading the “unauthorized” biography about him by super author Monte Burke, The Making of a Coach, he really is very sensitive about what people think about him. 

I applaud Paul for asking the question. In my opinion, the pot is what it is. Saban explained to Finebaum in his profanity-laced tirade against him that it was a minimal amount. College kids smoke pot. It’s been done since the ’60’s and the drug culture was probably a lot worse then. I don’t want my daughters to ever smoke pot, or drink at all for that matter, but I’m not clueless, I know smoking pot and drinking are all over college campuses. It’s been that way for a long time. But if I was a coach, I wouldn’t want my football players smoking pot. I know Saban doesn’t want his players doing that, but it’s tough to police particularly when they’re away from the program for a break. 

To me there is a different standard for college football players than regular college students. These guys are  trying to be top level players and most all of them  want to play in the National Football League and make an incredible living, so doing it is pretty ignorant for them. They’re taking a big risk. But they’re kids and a lot of them are are short sighted, both athletes and regular students. A lot don’t smoke pot or even drink though. A lot of college football players, and college athletes in general, do the right thing and aren’t going to jeopardize what could be a very lucrative career that could set them up for life financially if their health holds up. It’s a tough way to make a living with the dangers of concussions and other injuries, but it also pays major financial dividends for the guys who do make it to the top level.

So that’s not intelligent on those two players’ part for that reason. They are getting free room, board, a college education, which always seems to get swept under the rug by these ESPN people which is ludicrous because you can’t replace a college degree and less than 1% of college athletes play their sport professionally. So it’s quite a privilege to play in the NFL. The players now also get a stipend to live on and all the food they want to eat. That’s a pretty  good deal in my opinion. So there’s a responsibility that comes with that. It’s not hard. Just don’t put yourself in bad positions. You can still have fun. You can smoke pot if you choose to, though it’s illegal in most states. You can do it at a friend’s house or go to a bar and hang out with friends. if you’re serious about your sport maybe you shouldn’t imbibe.  if you want to do that with friends though, and you’re probably going to be fine. You shouldn’t do it, it’s illegal, but if you want to relax with friends and decompresses, as long as it’s not a problem, then i guess some people would think that’s OK. I personally wouldn’t want my son doing that, but some kids can handle it better than others. I knew many people who smoked pot at my college, made good grades, and never had a problem with it. They quit right after college and it was never an issue. I have to admit, I did it myself some, and while I regret it, I haven’t done it since college and NEVER want my two daughters to do it. I stopped drinking in 2009 because it got in the way of my sleep and my work, and as a lot of people who don’t drink say, it didn’t work for me. I had some great memories carousing with friends though. I told my college and high school daughter about a year ago about a trip I took to New Orleans the summer after my freshman year at Vanderbilt where, after a hard week of work in a summer job in a steel plant, I met a great friend of mine from high school who was working in Houston and had just finished up his freshman year at UVA. I told my daughters of that trip, “we had a blast. I don’t remember much of it though.” I do remember having one of the best times of my life with my friend, but we did a lot of carousing and some pot smoking. We didn’t drive when we drank, and I just remember laughing a ton and throwing the frisbee in a park in N’Awlins when there was a blackout in the city that afternoon, and really laughing hysterically at the bars we were at in the Quarter. We went at it pretty hard. It was fun. We had gone to boarding school together and it was like being in the military with how it was spartan rules at a strict, difficult school, that was about making good grades and being good at sports and being a leader, and so we liked the freedom to enjoy life a little bit particularly since we had been working hard that summer. But no harm, no foul. 

My group of friends seemed to handle the carousing fine and most all of them are good people now, both my high school and college friends. But some guys can’t handle it and can’t control themselves and it can cause them problems in college and later in life if they don’t have enough personal discipline. But I don’t begrudge people for having a drink or two or three. I have no problem with that as long as they don’t hurt people on the streets or in a bar or attack a woman. if they can control themselves I have no problem with it. They can knock themselves out. I know it’s fun, a relaxing thing for a lot of people. I have no problem with that at all.

With all that said, I get it, kids smoke pot, too. I don’t have a major problem with Saban’s discipline of Cam and Jones for the pot making them ride around with the police in Tuscaloosa and going  to counseling, and there are other stipulations, all of that is good. I hear ya S.

But the guns at 2:30 AM in a Louisiana park to me are a problem. I understand that Hootie had a gun in his lap, he told the cops who approached them  and he had a license for it. But there was a gun under the seat, too. As Saban and all the SEC coaches who have had discipline problems in this offseason have said and, constantly remind us, we don’t know the complete story, all the facts. I understand that. Dan Mullen’s situation with the Simmons player, who is a freshman, and was suspended for one game for hitting a girl who was harassing him and fighting him and saying negative, in his face things about his deceased nephews. So there is a lot more to these stories than meets the eye. Mullen suspended the player one game. With the assaults on women such a hot topic issue these days, he should have done more. I’m not sure that guy should have played this year, and it was a pretty lame disciplinary measure in my opinion.

With Cam and Hootie, they should be suspended for three games. I originally said six games, but with the disciplinary measures Saban took against them, their suspensions should be reduced to three games. But they should absolutely be suspended. Having guns in your possession at 2:30 in the morning in a park is a major problem. And while Saban told Finebaum that the cops were LSU fans targeting these players that sounds pretty lame to me too. Guns are a major problem in this country. Not really guns, but some of the people who use them. I’m not against the second amendment by any means, but we need some measure of gun control for people who don’t know how to handle it like the psychotic shooter who killed five cops a week ago in Dallas. There needs to be background checks on people before they can buy guns. I don’t care if it’s inconvenient for anybody or if it costs more to do it, it needs to be done. Guns are a problem because there are a lot of idiots who don’t know how to control themselves.

So there needs to be a message sent to these two players that that’s unacceptable and will not be tolerated. I don’t care what Coach Saban says about the way to discipline a player, keeping a player from playing football games, particularly a guy like Cam who could be a top five pick in the NFL draft, maybe even the first player selected in 2017, sends a serious message, and it’s doing the kid a good service. They need to learn about accountability, that there are consequences for a having guns at 2:30 in the morning in a park. What the hell are they trying to do with the guns at that time? It can lead to people getting seriously hurt or even losing their lives. So it’s very serious. The Louisiana DA had some idiotic response that these guys work hard in football as opposed to people who don’t work outdoors, so they are excused. Honestly, that’s unacceptable and he should be fired for neglecting his duty to at least investigate this case further. Maybe there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute. Could very well have been. But it  sounds like to me that the DA was lazy and  didn’t try at all to find any evidence. His answer was laughable if it had been a funny matter, but it’s so unethical it’s pathetic and he should be held accountable for that,

And Saban’s explosion at Finebaum is not acceptable either. Paul had every right to ask that question. It’s the most important question that Saban could have been asked today. Are we going to let athletes slide because, as that moron DA said, they work harder outside than people do inside, which to me is completely inaccurate. There are plenty of people who have very challenging professions in law, business, medicine, sales, many fields. There are a lot of hard working people whose jobs a lot of football players would have no clue how to do. My job is hard. Cam may be able to play football better than I do at 54 years old, though I was a pretty decent running back in my high school days. But he can’t do what I do for work at this point. And I know there is no way he could do what a lot of lawyers, doctors and businessmen do for a living at this point either. Maybe with training he could. So that rationale is idiotic.

There should be more consequences for Cam Robinson and Hootie Jones. They should be suspended for three games this season, regardless of how good they are. To me there is no gray area there, and for Nick Saban to lambaste Paul for asking the question is arrogant beyond belief and really delusional.

There should be harsher consequences for these guys. These are softball measures and Saban should be called out for it. I’m glad Paul did. I applaud him for that. Nick Saban should take some heat for this and for his major overreaction to Paul Finebaum highly relevant questioning.