Alabama has released the list of secondary violations that it reported to the NCAA for the past fiscal year. On Friday evening, the athletic department released a list of 22, with nine of them having to do with the Crimson Tide football team. Some of the nine aren’t that interesting, but a few of them are a bit eye-catching. All of them are quite minor, to say the least.
One of them directly has to do with head coach Nick Saban. But don’t worry Bama fans, Saban isn’t going to get fired or anything. Apparently Saban accidentally called a recruit’s number that he thought was a coach’s before September of the recruit’s senior year.
It resulted in rules education for the football staff and the recruit in question wasn't contacted for a two-week period last September.
Another of the other eight reported violations involves a Bama player who was suspended four games last season for selling school equipment, which was valued at $820. Al.com suspects that player could be defensive lineman Johnny Dwight, who Saban said was re-eligible after the Tide’s first four games on Sept. 26.
A third violation involves the number of on-field assistants allowed to coach games, which is nine. A non-member of the coaching staff is said to have “provided tactical instruction” during a game.
Now I am totally joking about this, and there’s absolutely no evidence that this happened, but part of me wants to imagine that person was none other than this dude, who was caught screaming at Deshaun Watson during the 2016 College Football Playoff National Championship. The Internet started a rumor that it could’ve been Saban’s son.
Again: I’m not saying it was him, and there’s literally no proof of that, I just think it’s hilarious to imagine if it was.
AL.com briefly summarized the remaining six.
- A player participated in an impermissible promotional activity
- A mid-year enrollee tweeting about hosting a specific recruit.
- There were two instances of communication with recruits prior to the allowed window.
- There was impermissible in-person contact with a recruit
- The allowance of an impermissible recruiter to be present during an off-campus meeting.
None of these are obviously major, and it isn’t uncommon for Alabama to release the violations — the school does so at the end of every fiscal year, which is June 30.