Nick Saban might not like the transfer portal rules, but he’s mastered them
TYLER SISKEY WANTS to be clear: He doesn’t think Alabama coach Nick Saban is hypocritical when he says something is bad for college football and then goes out and does the exact thing he was complaining about. Siskey, who worked for Saban in his player personnel department from 2013 to ’14, knows his former boss to be a pragmatic man.
So when Saban raised a red flag about the unintended consequences of the transfer portal back in 2019, Siskey heard genuine concern for the state of the sport. Parity might be a myth in the modern NCAA, but it’s a myth Saban holds dear. And the portal, to Saban’s way of thinking, threatens the notion of competitive balance because it allows programs to poach players from struggling teams.
“So is that going to make the rich get richer?” Saban asked reporters during a news conference last year. “I don’t know.”
To Siskey and those connected to Alabama over the past decade, Saban’s question doubled as a warning — one he’d heard before.
“He’s telling you the truth about this not being a good thing,” Siskey said. “But he’s got the rules and he’s going to follow them.”
What’s more, Siskey added, Saban is adept at turning rules into an advantage.
“You know, he didn’t like spread offenses, either,” Siskey continued. “But you see what they’ve done.”
Saban once looked at the proliferation of spread offenses — with their quick tempo and offensive linemen running downfield — and asked, “Is this what we want football to be?” He was roundly mocked at the time. But then he went out and hired Lane Kiffin as offensive coordinator and told him to put his foot on the gas. Almost overnight, Alabama started producing some of the most dynamic offenses in college football.
“If that’s how the game’s going to be played,” Siskey said, “he’s going to play it.”
And he’s probably going to play it better than anyone. While Saban might dislike what the portal is doing to college football, that didn’t stop him from mastering it this past offseason, using it like NFL free agency but without a pesky salary cap. Forget taking unproven talent or drafting from the lower levels of football. He aimed higher.
When offensive tackle Evan Neal, running back Brian Robinson Jr., cornerback Josh Jobe and receivers John Metchie and Jameson Williams left via the NFL draft after last season, Alabama replaced them with proven Power 5 players. It signed offensive tackle Tyler Steen, who started 33 consecutive games at Vanderbilt; running back Jahmyr Gibbs, an All-ACC selection at three different positions at Georgia Tech; cornerback Eli Ricks, a former top-50 prospect and All-American at LSU; and wide receivers Jermaine Burton and Tyler Harrell, starters and high-level producers at Georgia and Louisville, respectively.
Siskey laughs at the absurdity of such a haul. Gibbs is playing his way into Heisman Trophy consideration after racking up 206 yards and two touchdowns against Arkansas last Saturday.
“Saban’s the best at what he does for a reason, right?” Siskey said.
A COLLEGE HEAD coach in the Southeast leans back in his chair and points to a cell phone sitting face up on his desk. Every day, he says, he gets calls on behalf of college players around the country — from former high school coaches, from trainers, from so-called mentors. He recounts the gist of every conversation: “Hey, So and So isn’t happy there.”
It’s the first month of the college football season, the transfer window is closed to non-graduates, but players are already shopping outside the portal for potential destinations. The coach says there are all these “underground connections” that lead to players’ next schools. “How tangled up that is, you go, ‘Whoa,'” he says.
Take Alabama. Steen went to the same high school in South Florida as safety Jordan Battle and outside linebacker Dallas Turner. Burton knew quarterback Bryce Young from California. Ricks played with Young at Mater Dei High School.
Gibbs, it turns out, was originally recruited by Alabama out of Dalton High School in Georgia. He was also offered a scholarship and recruited by North Carolina running backs coach Robert Gillespie, who joined the Alabama staff in 2021.
A Georgia Tech source said the staff was deflated when it learned that Gibbs — the team’s most talented player — was planning to leave. But they didn’t get the sense he was entering the portal for money via name, image and likeness opportunities. “The kid just wanted to win,” the source said.
But that same source said the transfer landscape is changing and growing more “out of control” with personnel departments keeping lists of potential transfer targets with geographical or personal connections to the team.
Less than two years ago, when the NCAA allowed players to transfer once with immediate eligibility and the portal exploded with activity, coaches were worried about what’s known in basketball as transferring up: players moving from Division II to Division I or from the Group of 5 to the Power 5. But blue bloods like Alabama are showing movement can happen at the highest levels, too.
Jordan Addison won the Biletnikoff Award at Pitt and entered the portal in May. He and Bryce Young worked out in California while he was in transfer limbo. Alabama even made overtures about bringing him to Tuscaloosa, sources said, but it never got far because he was intent on joining USC and its new coach Lincoln Riley.
Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi wasn’t happy with Riley for how the Addison saga unfolded. But Narduzzi was hardly alone in questioning the transfer process. Louisville coach Scott Satterfield suggested to 247Sports that Harrell was tampered with after he left for Alabama; Saban denied any wrongdoing.
A Power 5 assistant said the game has changed. “The whole goal of the postgame handshake,” he said, “is to start recruiting the other team.”
The paranoia is real, and quick commitments after a player enters the portal further fuel speculation.
On Jan. 10, Alabama lost to Georgia in the national championship game. Eight days later, Burton entered the portal. And four days after that, he announced he was joining Alabama.
In February, Saban addressed his use of the portal. He said that Burton “had some production this year” at Georgia.
Then he paused and shrugged.
Burton had 26 catches for 497 yards yards and 5 touchdowns.
“But [he] probably might have seen a better opportunity because we’re a little more wide open and throw the ball more with a good quarterback,” Saban added. “That may have been his intention.”
When Burton finally did speak to reporters this summer, he said he had moved on from Georgia and the championship.
“I honestly forgot about that game. I want to win with this team.”
LAST YEAR, MISSOURI coach Eliah Drinkwitz tried to peer into the future.
“We’re about two steps into a mile race,” he said of the transfer portal, “and I don’t think anyone knows the pace and I don’t think anyone knows the strategy and I don’t think anyone knows what the rules will be when this ends.”
Long story short: No one knows, or at least no one has settled on what’s the right thing to do.
The NCAA established windows of transfer activity in August, but that’s just a way of damming a river and pretending there’s not pressure building up on the other side. Because there most certainly is.
Strategies have varied wildly from one school to another. Georgia didn’t take a single transfer this offseason. Ole Miss took more than a dozen.
Siskey, who also spent time on staffs at Ole Miss and Arkansas State, expects Alabama to continue to be selective. “They don’t have to stretch for a guy in the portal,” he said, because Saban and his staff recruit high schools at such a high level; the Tide have finished in the top three of ESPN’s class rankings every year since 2008. Schools similarly flush with four- and five-star prospects — Ohio State, Clemson and the like — can instead use the portal as a supplement, filling gaps when a player leaves early for the NFL draft.
Leaning on the free agency analogy, Siskey said there are most often two motivating factors when it comes to players signing their next contracts: money and the ability to win a championship.
At Alabama, he said, there’s no need to sacrifice one for the other.
The Crimson Tide have won six national championships since 2009. No other team has won more than two during that time.
NIL, Saban said, is “not an issue for us.” He claimed players earned more than $3 million in name, image and likeness deals last season.
Siskey pointed to future earnings as another metric. This April, Saban claimed Alabama players have earned $1.7 billion in the NFL.
Steen got his degree from Vanderbilt and said he was looking for something new when he decided to transfer after last season.
And while adjusting to a new playbook, a new locker room and a new culture at Alabama isn’t easy, it appears to have been a successful transition. He has started every game at left tackle.
Steen said he has embraced the “different expectations” at his new home and how many people push him to reach his full potential.
“It’s different over here for sure.”
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Inspirational thought of the week:
“Honestly, when we lose, I don’t even get in the shower until early this morning. I’ll just be mad. I just brush my teeth. It’s like, I don’t deserve soap.”
— Syracuse head coach Fran Brown
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located behind the “sorry, not sorry” bouquet of water hemlocks sent to the Big 12 officiating office from Utah athletic director Mark Harlan, we know all too well the sting of losing football games. We see it every week in every game we watch.
Yeah, yeah, we know what you’re thinking. “Come on, dummy, someone loses every game that anyone watches.” That’s true. At least now it is. We are also old enough to remember when games ended in ties. That was way worse.
But here in the Bottom 10 Cinematic Universe, losses are worse because that’s all you experience. You’d think we’d get used to it, numb from the pain like when you keep accidentally biting that same spot on your tongue to the point that it just becomes sensory free. But instead, it’s like Bruce Banner explained about being the Hulk: “You see, I don’t get a suit of armor. I’m exposed. Like a nerve. It’s a nightmare.”
However, as we learned in “Age of Ultron,” even after one of his worst losses, Bruce Banner does take a shower. So, Coach Brown, take it from us, in a world where every team has a helluva lot more losses than Syracuse … dude, wash up. Seriously. We can smell you from here. And we’re in Kent, Ohio.
With apologies to Mr. Clean, former Miami (Ohio) quarterback Mike Bath, former Southern Illinois running back Wash Henry and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 11 Bottom 10 rankings.
The Golden(plated) Flashes are still America’s last winless FBS team, losing their 18th straight game when they were edged by Ohio 41-0. Now they travel to My Hammy of Ohio, where they are given a 2.8% chance to win by the ESPN Analytics Ouija board, er, I mean Matchup Predictor. But honestly, that game will only be the appetizer ahead of the, yes, Week 13 main course that is the Wagon Wheel showdown with Akronmonious. And by appetizer we mean way-past-the-expiration-date freezer-burned mini-pizza bagels.
The New Owls not only used their talons to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at UTEP, losing in double overtime, they earned Bottom 10 Bonus Points for firing their head coach — and during their first year as an FBS team, no less. Though the AD issued a statement that Brian Bohannon had “stepped down,” Bohannon himself responded on social media: “Contrary to what’s been reported, I want to be clear that I did not step down.” But there is no confusion as to whether the Owls have stepped up or down in these rankings, where every move up is also a move down.
Brett Favre Funding U. lost to We Are Marshall 37-3, meaning all eight of their defeats this season have been by double digits. In related news, I also received double digit political texts on Election Day — and one of those was from Favre. No, for real. I wonder, did he cover the data charges himself or did he steal change from the donation jar at his grocery store checkout?
Sometimes in this life we are asked to do things that go against the fiber of our being. Like taking your daughter to the concert of an artist you’ve never heard of. Or me having to use Earth’s most annoying instrument, the leaf blower. This weekend this team of Minutemen will be asked to try to defeat Liberty.
5. The Sunshine State
The Coveted Fifth Spot has never been more crowded. The FBS, FCS and NFL teams of Florida posted a 1-11 record over the weekend, salvaged only by the Miami Dolphins’ win over the Los Angeles Rams on “Monday Night Football.” UC(not S)F, US(not C)F, FA(not I)U, Stetson, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman all lost, led in misery by the Wildcats’ five-overtime loss to Southern. The Flori-duh Gate Doors celebrated the announced retaining of coach Billy Napier by losing to Texas in a squeaker 49-17. And My Hammy of Florida finally spotted an opponent a lead too large for a Cam Ward comeback and took its first loss of the season, falling to unranked Georgia Tech. If only someone else in the state could relate to that …
The Semi-No’s are continuing to work around the Coveted Fifth Spot by earning their Bottom 10 keep the old-fashioned way, not only losing to semi/sorta/kinda ACC member Notre Dame by a scant 52-3, but also earning a pile of their own Bottom 10 Bonus Points not by firing head coach Mike Norvell, but because Norvell fired both his offensive and defensive coordinators and a wide receivers coach. In related news, over the weekend a friend of mine steered his bass boat into a giant pile of sharp rocks and reacted by throwing his shirt and hat overboard.
It was three weekends ago that the Buttermakers lost to then-second-ranked Oregon 35-0. On Saturday, they lost to then-second-ranked Ohio State 45-0. Now they play sixth-ranked Penn State, and in two weeks end their season playing currently eighth-ranked Indiana. We have to assume that a team of professors from Purdue’s legendary mechanical engineering department is studying this experience as a way to assess the stress put on a school bus that is attempting to drive over a lava field covered in landmines.
The Minors have a weekend off to continue their post-Kennesaw victory party. And what’s the best way to snap yourself out of a two-week hangover? Hair of the dog? A cold bucket of water over the head? How about the hair of a coontick hound and a bucket of water from the river during a Week 13 trip to Neyland Stadium to play Tennessee?
Whatever is left of UTEP after Knoxville will then play whatever is left of the Other Aggies after their Week 12 trip to face the OG Aggies of Texas A&M. If there’s any justice in this world, then the loser and/or winner of that Aggie Bowl would go on to play …
The Other Other Aggies lost to the one-loss team the nation forgot about, Warshington State. But if you consider the week before that, we find a Bottom 10 conundrum. Utah State beat WhyOMGing? but the week before that lost to Whew Mexico by five points. Meanwhile, Wyoming, who lost to Utah State two weeks ago, spent last weekend beating New Mexico by five points. Perhaps we will be given some clarity when Wyoming ends the year at Washington State. Or perhaps we will have already given up. As so many here in the Bottom 10 seem to do.
Waiting list: Miss Sus Hippie State, Georgia State Not Southern, FA(not I)U, Akronmonious, Meh-dle Tennessee, WhyOMGing?, Temple of Doom, Living on Tulsa Time, You A Bee?, Standfird, people who put all those election signs up but now won’t take them down.
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