FAYETTEVILLE -- Thirteen of the 14 SEC head baseball coaches surely guffawed if all saw the July 15 opening session of SEC Football Media Days on the SEC Network from Hoover, Ala.
Presumably, Mitch Gaspard, the Alabama Crimson Tide baseball coach, didn't laugh.
Unless treating an audience to a rare flash of humor, Nick Saban is accustomed to reverence, not laughter, when he speaks in Alabama. And this time Alabama's 3-time national champion football coach clearly was not trying to be funny.
Even if Saban did convulse everyone watching who coaches college baseball outside of Tuscaloosa.
"Poor baby," they would have smirked, commiserating sarcastically.
Analyzing Alabama losing 42-35 to eventual 2014 national champion Ohio State in the Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl, which was serving as a 2014 national championship semifinal, Saban said too many of his players were distracted by NFL Draft information.
Oklahoma defeated Alabama 45-31 in the Sugar Bowl ending the 2013 season.
Saban said juniors and third-year sophomores can submit for a draft assessment until Dec. 15.
"They get that assessment back right before or right after Christmas and you have a playoff game coming up Jan. 1," Saban said.
"We're talking about a young person with a lot to deal with now. We had six guys in this situation this past year and 11 the year before."
Saban explained the woes of it all.
"So we're trying to get ready for a game and all of a sudden a guy finds out he's a first round pick," Saban said. "Or a guy that thought he was a first-round draft pick finds out he is not a first-round draft pick. Now the championship game is Jan. 11th or 12th and the 15th is still the day that people have to declare for the draft. I think it would be better not to submit that information until he was finished competing."
Since the draft was moved this year from April to May, Saban suggested moving everything else in the process back as well.
Saban seems to have some valid points, but he seems a whining diva comparied to college baseball coaches.
Coaches like Arkansas' Dave Van Horn aren't dealing with draft information as they go into the College World Series. They deal with the draft itself.
Arkansas center fielder Andrew Benintendi was drafted in the first round by Boston the day after Arkansas defeated Missouri State in the super regional game in Fayetteville to advance to the College World Series in Omaha.
Coach Norm DeBriyn's 1979 Razorbacks, Arkansas' first-ever College World Series team and still best-ever in Omaha as the national runners-up, also dealt with the actual draft while playing in the CWS.
Imagine Saban and Ohio State's Urban Meyer dealing with the actual NFL draft even as their teams practiced for the Sugar Bowl. Their "Cry Me a River" duet would flood New Orleans.
And leave college baseball coaches guffawing everywhere except in Tuscaloosa and Columbus.
Sports on 07/22/2015