Tag Archives: recruiting

There couldn’t be a slower football news month than May. Cooper Bateman helped break things up by committing to Alabama yesterday. Here’s the story from today’s printed editions …

Names like Jameis Winston and Gunner Kiel haunted Alabama’s pursuit for the next start quarterback.

Copper Bateman will go on another list. The Salt Lake City product, ranked among the best rising senior quarterbacks in the nation, committed to Alabama on Wednesday morning.

A consensus 4-star prospect, Bateman ranks fourth among quarterbacks nationally according to recruiting services Scout.com and 247sports.com. Rivals.com says he’s the No. 6 quarterback. Winston and Kiel, ranked among the best two passers in the country a year ago, chose Florida State and Notre Dame over Alabama, respectively.

Scott Cate, Bateman’s offensive coordinator at Cottonwood High School, distributed a statement to The Decatur Daily and other state media from his star quarterback Wednesday morning.

“This has been a great time in my life, I have had the rare opportunity to be able to choose from many great schools that would allow me to get a college degree and continue to play the game that I love,” Bateman’s statement read. “This has been a very difficult decision only because I was able to meet and get to know so many wonderful coaches at so many great universities.

“I have chosen to attend the University of Alabama.”

Bateman intends to graduate a semester early and enroll at Alabama next January. Should he follow the current plan, he’d be in Tuscaloosa for the spring practices leading into current starter AJ McCarron’s final year of eligibility.

Click here for the full story (no subscription required).

Update April 15: Dalvin Tomlinson, who signed with the Tide in February, attended Saturday’s A-Day Game. The crutches and knee brace appeared to confirm the injury reported a few weeks ago.

Tomlinson on crutches.

—

Original post: Credit The Henry Daily Herald for breaking this one.

The news isn’t exactly positive for one of Alabama’s last-minute Class of 2012 recruiting scores.

Defensive lineman Dalvin Tomlinson suffered a “significant” knee injury while playing soccer, the Henry Daily Herald reports.

This wasn’t a recreational or pickup soccer game. The 6-2, 266-pound lineman plays on the Henry County High School soccer team.

(Click here to read the full, but brief story with a quote from the injured prospect)

Tomlinson was one of the two defensive linemen (along with Korren Kirven) who signed with the Tide without making a public commitment beforehand.  He was a consensus 4-star prospect rated among the top 45 defensive linemen by the major recruiting services.

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(Video courtesy of 247sports via YouTube)

The recruiting services are reporting Alabama landed another commitment for the Class of 2013.

Offensive lineman Andy Dodd of Pepperell, Ga., is reportedly the latest to send his pledge to Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide program.

According to Rivals.com, who rated him a 3-star prospect, Dodd was also pursued by Southeastern schools like Clemson, Florida State, South Carolina, and Georgia Tech.

Scout.com hasn’t assigned star ratings yet, but Dodd’s profile listed scholarship offers from Georgia as well as those listed by Rivals.

He is the ninth public commitment made to the next Alabama class, though nothing is official until scholarship papers are signed next February.

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**Note to readers: Apparently this post was linked somewhere and is getting all kinds of traffic. I promise this is probably the least interesting story I’ve written. Check back regularly and follow me through social media for the good stuff.**

The recruiting sites are reporting on Alabama’s ninth commitment for the 2013 football class.

ESPN.com first reported Huntsville High offensive lineman Grant Hill gave his pledge to the Crimson Tide after attending junior day activities on Saturday.

Hill is a 4-star prospect according to Rivals.com. He stands 6-6 and weighs 315 pounds.

Click here for the story on ESPN.com or here for the Rivals.com version. You’ll need a subscription for both.

The list of high school juniors who’ve made public commitments now includes the following:

OL Bradley Bozeman, Roanoke, Ala.
DB Artie Burns, Miami, Fla.
WR Raheem Falkins, New Orleans, La.
LB Reuben Foster, LaGrange, Ga.
OL Grant Hill, Huntsville, Ala.
TE OJ Howard, Autauga, Ala.
RB Tyren Jones, Marietta, Ga.
ATH/WR Ardarius Stewart, Fultondale, Ala.
RB Altee Tenpenney, Little Rock, Ark.

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On the eve of national signing day, this is an appropriate time to look back at a project I completed this time last year.

With all the focus placed on football recruiting, I thought it was important to look at the growing influence of the news services that feed the interest. So I wrote a multi-story package that ran before last signing day.

Take a look back since the idea behind remains relevant this year.

Story 1: Science of the stars

Not too long ago, Scott Kennedy’s friends thought he went nuts.

Follow recruiting?

As a career?

“Flash forward about five or six years and my friends’ wives are asking me where Terrelle Pryor was going to school,” Kennedy said.

And so the machine turns.

As the director of scouting at one of the two empires to college recruiting knowledge — Scout.com — the former high school soccer player and self-described “football geek” helped turn a hobby into a national obsession.

Annual subscriptions can run upwards of $100 for all the latest information, evaluations and insider information regarding the college decision-making process for 16-, 17- and 18-year-old blue-chip football and basketball players.

Click here to read the whole story.

Story 2: Coaches hope their puppies will hunt

TUSCALOOSA — The ink was barely dry on the 2010 signing class when Nick Saban stepped to the podium last February.

His preemptive strike was planned well in advance. He wasn’t waiting to face a single question about the strength of his latest recruiting class at the signing day news conference.

Saban said it was too early to claim victory or defeat with the 18 players who faxed their futures to Tuscaloosa that Wednesday morning.

Champions aren’t crowned by simply adding up stars on a website.

“Every year, I try to come up with some analogy to sort of put in perspective how you should rate recruiting classes,” Saban said that afternoon. “If we went out to buy a hunting dog and it was a puppy, we would buy it based on its potential, its lineage or whatever you want to call it in terms of breeding, and we would know probably when that dog grew up whether it was a good hunting dog or not. We’d never know until we put him out in the field and saw him actually go hunting, but we would buy it without knowing for sure what that result would be.

“I think recruiting is not an exact science and it takes about two years to really evaluate whether you had a good recruiting class or not.”

Click here for the rest.

Story 3: Saban’s 2008 recruiting class proved fruitful

TUSCALOOSA — The two main recruiting services don’t always agree, but there was a solid consensus achieved two years ago.

Nick Saban was sitting on a gold mine.

His signing class of 2008 sat atop both Scout.com and Rivals.com rankings of recruiting classes. The group was stockpiled with big-name prospects such as Julio Jones and Mark Barron.

But since the class also included a few high-profile misses, it’s an interesting study in how recruiting services can hit some spot-on and miss completely on others.

Rivals assigned just three stars to both Marcell Dareus and junior-college transfer Terrence Cody. Both were stars as Cody went in the second round of last year’s NFL draft and Dareus is expected to go in the first round this year.

Then there is the case of Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram — a three-star player coming out of Flint, Mich., according to Scout.

Click here to read the rest.

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Remember last signing day? It was an incredible mix of indecision, changing decisions, and decidedly high levels of excitement.

So, about that sequel … Expect something on the lines of “Speed 2″ if you’re looking for the action-packed thrill ride of the year.

“For the most part, there shouldn’t be a lot of drama on signing day,” said Scott Kennedy, the director of scouting for Scout.com. “You know, ho hum, another No. 1 class.”

The defending national champion Crimson Tide is a virtual lock to land the top recruiting class when scholarships are signed next Wednesday.

Alabama holds a healthy lead over consensus No. 2 Texas according to all three major recruiting services.

Click each site name for its respective team rankings:

• Scout.com
• Rivals.com
• 247sports.com

There’s always room for some last-second craziness, but Alabama already has 27 public commitments for the 25 scholarships it’s allowed to award. We’ll address how that affects things at a later date.

Click here for more information on recruiting.

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