Last Friday, LSU coach Brian Kelly said the Tigers were going to host “upwards of 300 recruits and families” for its home meeting against Alabama football on “The Pat McAfee Show,” a game he called “huge,” a game he said “everyone has” on their schedules.
In front of “upwards of 300 recruits and families,” LSU lost to Alabama 42-13.
When asked about Kelly’s recruiting comments Friday, former Alabama football coach Nick Saban was empathetic, remembering what he had to do with the Crimson Tide ahead of a premier home game in Tuscaloosa.
“I was even saying on my way over here how much easier it was to play on the road from my coaching load standpoint,” Saban said on “The Pat McAfee Show” Friday. “If you had 300 recruits in there… who talked to those guys while they were there? the coaches had to them, the head coach had to talk to them. So you are spending so much time Friday and Saturday recruiting, it takes away from the focus on the game. And then you’re asking a player, ‘Hey, why don’t you go and say hi to a recruit.’ Instead of him focusing on the game, he’s worried about recruiting. When you play on the road, you don’t have any of that.”
Saban remembered his coaching load at Alabama, where he had to speak at an alumni event each Friday before a home game before returning to the football facilities to talk to recruits.
On game days, Saban said he would have “trouble getting dressed in time to get out for warm ups” because he had so many recruits to talk to.
In Saban’s tenure at Alabama, he had 10 classes ranked as the No. 1 composite recruiting class in college football: each class between 2011-17, 2019, 2021 and 2023.
“It can be a distraction. But if you want to have a good team, you have to do a good job of recruiting,” Saban said. “Like you have heard me say so many times, I have never learned how to coach bad players to play good. I never learned that.”
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Nick Saban reflects on Alabama football recruiting during premier games
