Alabama athletics director gave his perspective on Alabama’s mounting transfer portal losses after Nick Saban’s retirement.
Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne reacted Wednesday afternoon to several high-profile transfer portal departures from the Tide since Nick Saban’s retirement, including the team’s two top 2023 freshmen in safety Caleb Downs and offensive tackle.
“You absolutely don’t like it. You don’t like it for the team,” Byrne said on the Paul Finebaum Show. “Alabama is such a special place. The investment we make in our young men and young women across the board for our sports, and what we do from an academic support, medical support, mental health, nutrition — across the board — is as good as any place in the country.
“We’ve had young men and young women transfer in here from many prominent universities, and say, ‘My gosh, I had no idea how good I was going to get treated at Alabama compared to where I came from.’ And we had young men and young women who have transferred out of here and have called back and said, ‘I don’t know how well I had it at Alabama.'”
Alabama spent almost $200 million on its athletic department during its most recently reported fiscal year, according to The USA Today’s database. The Knight-Newhouse project provides a more detailed breakdown on the department’s spending.
“We understand why young men and young women at times explore their options, and we try to be very transparent and honest with them during that time,” Byrne said. “That’s the best thing we could do. We say it with all good intentions and the truth, that we think this is the best place in the country for a student-athlete to come to school and compete at the highest levels, in everything that they do.”
Separate from the athletic department is Yea Alabama, the third-party collective that organizes NIL deals for players. Byrne wore a Yea Alabama lapel pin to Kalen DeBoer’s introductory news conference Saturday and wore a Yea Alabama pullover on Wednesday’s appearance on Finebaum.
“NIL is part of it,” Byrne said. “We have been very — try to be aggressive with our NIL approach. It’s reality. I’m wearing my Yea Alabama pullover right now. Which we’ve had almost 1,000 new members since we announced Coach DeBoer. We have to continue to get people to sign up and be a part of that, because it’s the reality of what we’re facing.
“Coach Saban did such a great job of continuing to adapt to what the realities of the world are. We are going to continue to do the same thing. If a young man goes into the transfer portal, we try to be very transparent with them and talk with them through that and be strategic with them. And at the same time too, we won’t certainly fault somebody if they’re interested in it. But we’re also very confident that this is the best place in the country, by far, for anybody to go to school.”
Byrne said Saban remains involved in contacting his former players about their futures.
“He is going to be an advisor for us,” Byrne said. “He and I talked this morning. He’s been very helpful, trying to talk to the young men that he’s recruited here and again, say, we’re in a really good spot going forward.”
Byrne told Finebaum that there was a pre-existing plan before Saban’s retirement to divide the roster into groups and have a different staff member proactively contact players when the news broke. Byrne specifically named sports medicine director Jeff Allen, player development directors Denzel Devall and Josh Chapman, football COO Ellis Ponder and recruiting operations associate director Ashleigh Kimble as staff members who were involved.
“We need to get you, boots on the ground, [to] actively engage with them on a daily basis. Not wait for them to call you, but going to them,” Byrne said. “And all those people deserve a ton of credit. I did a video that went out to all the players’ parents, so they could hear from me directly. I obviously couldn’t pick up the phone and call all of them.
“We had plans in place of things we were going to try to do to manage the situation where we were with today’s environment. That’s what we’ve been doing and that’s what we’re going to continue to do right now.”
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