National Signing Day

Wednesday the 4th of February, 2009 was indeed an exciting day. Football enthusiasts all over America had their attention focused on where the best players were going to play beginning this fall. Now to me this did not used to be such a big deal, but since Nick Saban came to Alabama a few years ago, my interest in college football and my understanding of what is really going on seems to be increasing.

A college team can win games sometimes with just good old 'grit' and 'determination.' But these are such vague terms and highly unmeasurable, it makes my college trained mind think we need a goal analysis here. I feel an analogy coming on. Someone recently explained to me that a college football teams success can be compared to a good restaurant, the players are the ingredients in the food served, the coach is the chef, the high school coaches are the supplier of ingredients. It can be said that a good chief can make lesser ingredients taste fabulous some times but the best path to having consistently fabulous food is to use the best ingredients possible. A plan to consistently have the best ingredients and the best coach would seem to insure a consistent winner. And that best coach will also be a great teacher as this will insure that the players advance and make progress during the season from week to week.

So National Signing Day is a big deal for those teams that want to compete for a national championship in the next few years. When you get the best horses in the stable you have a better chance to win the race. Alabama is a great place for football and the Crimson Tide program as setup by Coach Saban has a learning process along with procedures to bring new players in, get them acclimatized to college studies and also to advance through a winning football training program that addresses every aspect of a players needs. It is not just enough to tell a player what to do, they make sure that players understand their role and how to accomplish it. Meaningful practice is employed so those skills can be honed to a championship quality. Having only great players on the team adds competition and motivation for each to work hard and become better. This seems to be similar to the path for success in life.

So congratulations to Coach Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide for their #1 recruiting class on rivals.com for the second year in a row. Instead of just one Julio Jones as wide receiver there will be four others just as good, and the depth on the offensive and defensive lines in improved considerably as well. The running back position also has much more depth. All of this seems to lead to greater anticipation and excitement for the Spring A Day game on April 18th, 2009. The place will be packed again is my guess.

Looking forward to another great year, ROLLIN WITH THE TIDE.