Nick Saban defended his practice of oversigning every year and culling underperforming upper classmen with some ingenious circular logic. We can’t criticize how Saban dispenses scholarships because Alabama won’t release that information. Alabama won’t release that information, because Saban doesn’t want us to know how he dispenses scholarships. Brilliant.

Saban claims he has never dismissed a player from the program unjustly.

Any player that has left this program prematurely has created his own exit route. He’s created his own conditions for leaving, if that makes sense. Whether they are academic in terms of not doing what he needed to do academically, whether it is some violation of team or school policy, some of those things we are not allowed to talk about.

Nick Saban just has the remarkable foresight to know exactly how many players will “create their own exit route” and plan accordingly. We have to take his word for it, since he’s “not allowed to talk about” why a student-athlete was dismissed from the team, even if that disappointing four-star recruit “violated team rules” by being two minutes late for a meeting.

Stewart Mandel points out Alabama has had 12 players leave the program with medical hardships in Saban’s four years at the school. Ohio State has had 4 players with medical hardships, during Jim Tressel’s 10 years. There are bound to be more irreparable injuries when collisions occur at SEC speed.

Saban’s actions may be immoral, but they don’t pay him the big bucks to be moral. He’s paid to win the SEC and the national title every season. His mission is to field the best possible team within the rules. However unsavory his roster culling practices are, they are within the rules.

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