Nick Saban ponders the value of working satellite camps

Alabama head coach Nick Saban sits on the throne of college football with a handful of national championship rings, including the most recent one from last season. Saban’s superiority begins in recruiting with top classes being signed regularly under his watch. Saban is not in need of finding ways to work the system to create any additional recruiting advantages, including working at any satellite camps.

The NCAA does not prohibit football coaches from working as a guest conductor at a football camp outside of his school’s 50-mile radius, but the SEC and ACC have bylaws that prevent their football coaches from doing so. The SEC could be prepared to release their coaches from those restrictions if the NCAA does not shut down what they perceive to be a loophole in the NCAA rule book, but Saban is suggesting there may be no value in participating in a football camp outside of Alabama, at least not for Alabama.

“I’m really not even thinking that it has that much value,” Saban said. “What would be a more interesting question for you to research -- and I can’t answer this -- the teams that have done them, what value does it serve? How many players did they get? They had some players commit to them and some of those players decommitted, and I know they even wanted to drop some of those players when they found out they could get better players.”

Saban made that comment (and the ones to follow) this week in Indianapolis, per Al.com. You can understand where Saban would be coming from. Alabama has been developed into a national powerhouse that can have a relatively easier time recruiting than a number of other programs. While Jim Harbaugh is doing everything he can to generate enthusiasm and momentum to revive Michigan, Alabama is constantly riding on Cloud Nine and has little use for the same tactics being employed by Harbaugh up north in Ann Arbor.

So Saban has a valid point. There is little value in him going to satellite camps as far as Alabama is concerned. He could have simply left it at just that.

He did not.

“If everybody has a satellite camp, every player will have 62 camps to go to,” he said. “I don’t know how that works. The way it is right now if a player is interested and comes to your camp, he gets to see your campus, he gets to meet players, gets to work with your coaches a little bit more because he’s in your camp at your place. I think there’s a lot of value.”

No player is going to 62 camps. Saban doesn’t know how that works, because it wouldn’t. It is at this point Saban really goes off the tracks with his thoughts on satellite camps as he openly wonders what would happen in a world where each FBS program held a satellite camp in each major metropolitan area in the country.

“How many teams play Division 1 football?” Saban asked. “Are they all going to have a satellite camp in every metropolitan area? That means they’ll have 113 camps in Atlanta, 113 in Tampa, Orlando, Miami, Dallas, Houston. I mean, it sounds like a pretty ridiculous circumstance for me for something that nobody can really determine, did it have any value anyway?”

I understand what Saban is saying, but that is just a ridiculous hypothetical that is completely unworthy of discussion. Of course there will not be 113 satellite camps in Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles and so on. Saban says is sounds like a “pretty ridiculous circumstance” because it is a pretty ridiculous concept. But some programs benefit from the extra exposure. Michigan’s Class of 2016 included players from California, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia. Michigan’s Class of 2017 already has players lined up from Florida, Alabama and Georgia. Maybe, just maybe Michigan benefitted in some way from its summer tour last year?

The debate that raged last year has not changed, and the arguments against coaches working at satellite camps will continue to be no less ridiculous every time they are shared, even if they come from a guy like Saban.

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