Reuben Foster at his signing day celebration Wednesday. (AP photo by Butch Dill)
Some of you have requested Nick Saban‘s comments Wednesday about linebacker signee Reuben Foster. We’ve got a transcript for you, detailing Saban’s defense of his new player, who bounced between committing to Alabama, then Auburn, then Alabama again. And we’re throwing in the signing day photo of Foster dressed like Saban.
“We really think Reuben’s a good person and Reuben has a good heart and is certainly a good football player. I think that he really felt bad in some ways maybe by the way he handled his recruiting. I also think that all the media attention sometimes can affect these guys in maybe not the most positive way.
“At the same time, I think Reuben would like to please everyone. I think that he learned in this process that that’s very, very difficult and probably impossible to do. I think that’s probably what he feels bad about. Because he does like to please you is one of the reasons why he is a very good competitor. Some of these things that turn out to be or appear to be not good qualities, actually can be very good qualities if channeled in the right direction. I think Reuben came here because he wanted the structure, he wants to get it right, he wants to do things the right way and we want to help him do that.
“I think he’s got the right heart and right character to do it. I just think that — I would hate to think how I would have managed the attention that he got and a lot of these young people get when I was 17 or 18 years old. I don’t know if I would have been nearly mature enough to be able to manage it the way sometimes people would expect it to be managed. Especially — and you know I love the media and I would never blame this on you all for creating some of the circumstances you create that are very difficult for these young guys to manage.”
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