DESTIN, Fla. -- Alabama coach Nick Saban started his rant about satellite camps by bringing up the never-ending topic himself and saying he didn't want to talk about it. So naturally, Saban went off for several minutes by strongly criticizing the NCAA's decision to reverse the ban on satellite camps and describing what's happening now as "the wild, wild West at its best."
Satellite camps are the subject the SEC loves to keep returning to discuss, and Saban is often the conference's top attack dog. He pounded home his points Tuesday at the SEC Spring Meetings. At one point, he literally pounded a podium as his voice rose in anger about the practice of college coaches traveling around the country to help at summer camps.
"Anybody can have a camp now and if they have a prospect, they can have a camp," Saban said. "Then you're expected to go to that camp and then they can use you to promote that camp because Ohio State's coming, Alabama's coming, whoever else is coming. Somebody sponsors the camp. They pay them money. What do they do with the money? Then who makes sure the kid paid to go to the camp? I mean, this is the wild, wild West at its best because there's no specific guidelines relative to how we're managing or controlling this stuff."
The SEC pushed for a ban of satellite camps and initially got it from the NCAA Division I Council. The NCAA Division I Board of Directors overturned the ban and gave the council until Sept. 1 to make initial recommendations on the entire recruiting model, including satellite camps.
"This is the only sport where the high school coach still mattered, what (players) did at the high school mattered," Saban said. "So all you're doing is allowing all of these other people that they spend all of this time at the NCAA saying you can't recruit through a third party, you can't be involved with third-party people and that's exactly what you're doing, creating all these third parties that are going to get involved with the prospects and all that.
"And then who gets exposed on that? I go to a camp and I'm talking to some guy I don't know from Adam's house cat, he's representing some kid because he put the camp on and I'm in trouble for talking to this guy? And who even knows if the guy paid to go to the camp? Is the NCAA going to do that? I mean, we do that at our camp. We have people responsible for that. They're called compliance folks. What kind of compliance people do we have at these camps?"
Left unspoken: The SEC and ACC could have pushed for satellite camps to be regulated, not outright banned. The SEC's argument is that its on-campus camps are dramatically different than the recruiting that occurs at satellite camps.
"It's not just about recruiting," Saban said of Alabama's camp. "We have a little camp for little kids. I get 1,200 kids. Had to stop it at that because we're trying to promote our game and develop our players and we still coach the 600 guys that come to our camps. We have two of them. We coach them just like we coach our players to try to help develop them. Now we do have prospects in those camps and we do see how they do, but that's not what the camp's for, not from our standpoint. So why should we be promoting someone else's camp anywhere?"
Arkansas coach Bret Bielema said the biggest issue with satellite camps isn't other leagues coming into the SEC region, but SEC vs. SEC battles.
"We're all carnivores," said Bielema, who will have camps in Tampa, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit and South Florida. "We all look to attack and hunt and do everything. You've got coaches that are going to go into other SEC coaches' territories and that went over like a load of coal. I was set to go into Louisiana and Texas, and the sheets got pulled out from me pretty quick."
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said the league has discussed the idea of creating multiple conference-sponsored satellite camps. Sankey said the conversation will continue and doesn't mean the SEC will do them.
Saban was asked if he would have felt the same way if he still coached in the Big Ten like Jim Harbaugh, who is again touring the country (and even the world) with satellite camps.
"I'm not blaming Jim Harbaugh," Saban said. "I'm not saying anything about it. I'm just saying it's bad for college football. Jim Harbaugh can do whatever he wants to do. I'm not saying anything bad about him if he thinks that's best. There needs to be somebody who looks out for what's best for [college football], not what's best for the Big Ten, not what's best for the SEC, or not what's best for Jim Harbaugh."
Saban began his satellite camp discussion based off a question about background checks on recruits. As only Saban can do, he got his point across.
