Tuesday Morning Briefing: Alabama must persevere through ‘poor mes’ of Spring Practice, Injury Update & the BCS

The Alabama Crimson Tide worked in pads for the sixth practice session of Spring Practice. The practice focused on more team situations, Saban said. This served as an effort to get players ready for the scrimmage.

“We’ve made some progress as a team and we are getting a lot of reps out there,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said. “I didn’t feel like today was one our better days in terms of the number of guys that actually had the mental energy, the intensity and the sense of urgency. We sort of had some guys with the poor mes today. You get that at some point in time in the Spring, but I think it is something that good teams have to persevere and get through.”

“I told the players today after practice, I’ll call Michigan and ask them if they are going to take days off when they get tired, or are they going to try to work through it,” Saban said.

Saban said he wants to make use of Spring Practice in an effort to get many of the younger players experience.
“I think offensively we are a little bit ahead than we are on defense in terms that we have a few more experienced guys,” Saban said. “We have a very experienced offensive line. I think AJ has had a really good spring far; he’s done a nice job. I think Philip is competing very well behind him, and working hard to push him and compete against him and with him. I think the receivers have sort of made improvement, and we have some young guys that we need to continue to improve as well.”

“Defensively we have a lot of new faces and a lot of new opportunities for guys. We are going to continue to work with those guys so that we can improve.”

Injury Update
Blake Sims was injured during Spring Break playing basketball. DeAndrew White “tweaked his hamstring” during the offseason program and may be out for a few days, according to Saban.

“Other than that, everybody is working,” Saban said.

BCS Update
The BCS is hard at work trying to revise the college football postseason. The BCS released a statement Monday afternoon.

Statement by the eleven BCS Commissioners and the Notre Dame Athletics Director:

As part of our continuing discussions about how to decide college football’s national champion while maintaining the best regular season in sports, we met today in Dallas. The meeting was constructive and highly detailed.

While no decisions have been made about the overall structure, our talks have entered the “brass tacks” level. For every concept that enjoys broad support, there are a host of intricate details that we’re talking through.

For example, if we change the current format, would we play some games on campus or all games on neutral sites? If some games are on campus, is that too much of a competitive advantage? If all games are at neutral sites, would fans be able to travel to two games in a row? How would teams be selected? By a committee, by the current ranking formula, or by a different formula? When exactly would games be scheduled, considering finals, holidays and our desire to avoid mid-January games?

As we discuss the upsides and downsides of our decisions, we are united in our desire to protect our great regular season and honor the bowl tradition, while maintaining the collegiate nature of our sport.

We’re making good progress toward our self-imposed goal of making a final recommendation this summer to our governing bodies.

What do you think? Will the BCS effort to reform help or hurt college football? Is this an effort to harm the SEC’s football dominance?