Nick Saban shares his thoughts on Alabama flipping a pair of LSU commitments
By Adam Spencer
Published:
On the first day of the Early Signing Period, Alabama got a couple of surprise additions to its 2021 class — 4-star WR JoJo Earle and 4-star DE Keanu Koht.
Both of those talented prospects had been committed to LSU, but flipped to join the Tide at the last minute.
What did Nick Saban have to say about flipping a couple of guys away from an SEC West rival? He offered his praise to both players (via AL.com):
“I think both guys started several weeks ago sort of showing a little more interesting — maybe not being satisfied with where they were in their recruitment, or whatever,” Saban explained. “So we were pleased and happy to get both those guys. We think they’re both really, really good players. Really good people. Great families. We’re excited about those two guys for sure. Those are two guys that we’ve had discussions with in the last couple of weeks that were still up in the air.”
He added that he doesn’t worry about hurting other schools during his recruiting process, even if those schools have talked trash about Alabama in the past like LSU has:
“No, we don’t worry about other schools,” Saban responded. “We don’t talk about other schools in recruiting. We don’t get stimulated or whatever by what they say or do. We have a process of how we do things here. We’ve got a lot of people who contribute to that process and it’s worked well for us in the past.
“We try to create a lot of value for players, whether it’s in personal development, academic support and the success they have in developing a career off the field, the success they have in being able to develop a career on the field. Those are the things that we sort of try to focus on, is the culture of the program and how it’s going to help them be successful and have a chance to be more successful in life.
“Look, I’m not on the Internet. I don’t hear all that stuff out there. So I don’t even know what you’re talking about to be honest with you. So my motivation must be coming from some place else and it’s because we want to have a good team. We want to continue to have a good team. We want to have character, quality people in our organization who represent our program. And I’m pretty pleased that that’s been the case for a long time around here.”
Will Alabama manage to flip any additional players before Friday? Or, perhaps on National Signing Day in February? We’ll find out soon enough!
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 16 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.
