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Nick Saban rips media, NCAA's new camp rules

By The Sports Xchange
Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban takes the field before the game against the Clemson Tigers in the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship in Tampa, Florida on January 9, 2017. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI
1 of 3 | Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban takes the field before the game against the Clemson Tigers in the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship in Tampa, Florida on January 9, 2017. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

Alabama coach Nick Saban went on a fiery rant against the media and NCAA, and made it clear the Crimson Tide are not going to a conservative offense after losing the national title game.

Saban responded to a "ball-control question" from a reporter during Alabama's spring practice press conference on Tuesday and then moved on to rip the NCAA's camp rules.

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"I don't know where you came up with where we go to ball control," Saban said. "That's not what we do. The New England Patriots threw the ball over 60-something percent of the time, which is more than we threw it. So, where does that assumption come from or do you do what everybody else in the media does -- create some (expletive) and throw it on the wall and see what sticks, which is what I see happening everywhere?

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"And the people who scream the loudest kind of get the attention and then we pass some rule that everybody has to live with or some law and the consequences mess up a lot of other things. Do it all the time. We're doing it right now. ... Where did that come from? I never said that, nobody in this building ever said that, so where'd you come up with that? Just had a dream about it, or what?"

In the 35-31 loss to Clemson in the title game in January, Alabama had a nine-minute time of possession deficit and gave away a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter.

"We didn't block them," Saban said. "We didn't execute very well. We didn't throw the ball accurately when we had open people and a couple of times we dropped it. I think it was more a lack of execution than it was something schematically that we were doing. And that's on us as coaches. That's not to blame anybody but us for not having the players well-prepared. The defense also needs to get themselves off the field on third downs so they don't play as many plays. It's a combination of things.

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"But I do think we could have executed a lot better in that particular game. And I think most players would probably tell you that on both sides of the ball -- not to take anything away from Clemson. But it is what it is. But as we always do, we're going to self-assess what we did through quality control, what we did well, what we need to improve on and visit people, try to get better and the things we need to do better."

Saban then went on a tangent about the new NCAA rules, raising concerns about high school coaches being prohibited from working summer camps.

"And we pass some rule that everybody has to live with, or some law, where the consequences mess up a lot of other things," Saban said. "We do it all the time. We're doing it right now. The NCAA is doing it. We're going to change the way we have summer camps. We can't have high school coaches working summer camps. I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing that I've ever seen. It is what it is and whatever they do, they do.

"So we say we don't want third-parties dealing with players. So we're not going to let the high school coach bring a guy to camp, but some third-party guy can bring him to camp now. Makes no sense at all. But all the people who have common sense, they don't say anything about it. But the people who scream the loudest will get the thing changed and it'll mess everything up. That's the way it goes. The way it goes in the world, politics, just the way it goes."

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