Saban had reason for his shot at USF

A somewhat innocuous question to Alabama coach Nick Saban in his Monday press conference has set off a war of words regarding one of college football's most contentious issues.

Saban singled out South Florida, undefeated and ranked No. 6 in the country this week, as one example of schools who are able to take advantage of looser admissions policies within their conferences. The Bulls' starting tailback is Mike Ford, who signed with Alabama twice but did not qualify, then enrolled at South Florida in January after spending one semester at a Mississippi junior college.

Saban argued that the admission requirements should be uniform for all NCAA Division I schools:

“I think that the distribution of players is not the same for everyone. We can’t take Props (partial qualifiers) in the SEC. They can’t take them in the ACC. And there’s a significant amount of players who don’t qualify. And they end up being pretty good players at some of these schools. I think there are six guys starting on South Florida’s defense who probably could have gone to Florida or Florida State but Florida and Florida State couldn’t take them. And if you do a good job of recruiting that way—now the Big East has passed a rule that they aren’t going to take Props at some time in the future. I don’t know if it’s next year or the year after or whenever. Now, will that affect their league? It shrinks the pool of players that they can recruit from. I’m not saying it’s not a good rule by the NCAA that we have NCAA eligibility requirements. I think that’s a good rule. I’m not saying that. But it’s not the same for everyone and it does create a lot of parity when you’re playing those schools, you’re playing against guys you couldn’t recruit.”

South Florida coach Leavitt fired back today in this story published on the Tampa Tribune's Web site, saying:

"It's not right [what Saban said], we've done what we've done because we've worked extremely hard. ... Of 110 players, we have two nonqualifiers, one starts, one doesn't," Leavitt said. "The Big East doesn't allow nonqualifiers. For a guy to make a mistake like that is not right."

Leavitt has every right to defend his players and his program, but he's clearly talking out of both sides of his mouth on this issue. Does the Big East allow non-qualifiers or doesn't it? If it doesn't, how does he have two on his team, including one (Ford) who starts?

It's pretty obvious that certain programs, and not just South Florida, are able to take advantage of lower admissions standards. The Big East seems to be among the biggest beneficiaries in recent years.

Remember Deantwan "Peanut" Whitehead, the defensive end out of Birmingham two years ago who is now at Louisville? He'd have been at Alabama or Auburn if he had been able to get in either school.

Running back Noel Devine, a five-star Florida prospect in 2006, seemed ticketed for either Florida or Florida State until he stunned the nation by signing with West Virginia. The reason? He couldn't qualify for his home-state schools.

Saban, who always chooses his words carefully, might have been better served by not mentioning South Florida by name, or at least by citing other examples like those listed above. But he rarely says anything without a purpose, and he's probably trying to send a message to the NCAA that something needs to be done about the academic disparity between programs that are supposed to be playing by the same rules.