The number of underclassmen who enter the NFL draft only to go unselected is troubling to many around college football, Nick Saban included.

This year, 149 underclassmen entered the draft, but 44 went unselected. With no mechanism in place to allow them to return to school (such as exists in college basketball), their football careers might well be over.

But should college football adopt a similar policy to college basketball? Is it even feasible?

Saban was asked that very question when he met with the media prior to his annual keynote address for the Team Focus fundraiser in Mobile on Wednesday night. He seemed skeptical it would work, for several reasons:

For one thing, basketball has only 13 scholarship players, rather than 85 in football.

For another, the two sports’ offseason and recruiting calendars are completely different. Basketball players can enter the draft and return to their teams (if undrafted) without so much as missing a class or an offseason workout. And most basketball signings take place in November, before the season begins.

In football, national signing day takes place in either December or February. The NFL early entry deadline is in mid-January. Should a player enter the draft, but go undrafted and choose to return to school, he might have already been replaced on the roster.

“If we’re going to have this many people go out for the draft, that’s obviously a solution that some people should look at,” Saban said. “If that were the case in football, how many guys would go out for the draft? You could kiss spring practice goodbye. You wouldn’t know what kind of team … or who would be on your team for the next year. How would you know how many guys you could recruit if you don’t know how many guys are coming back to the team? I think when you have smaller numbers (as in basketball), that’s a little easier to manage.”

10 Nick Saban and Team Focus

Saban also raised concerns about the number of underclassmen who entered the draft, even those who went in the later rounds. In many cases, they’re not putting themselves in the best situation to succeed long-term even if they are drafted in the sixth or seventh round, he said.

“… Every coach I know is all about the players,” Saban said. “They want what is best for the players. When you have 140-some guys going out for the draft and 49 don’t get drafted, and a significant number get drafted in the last couple of rounds from that group, which means they probably won’t be on the squad in three years, you’ve got a lot of people with failed careers and no degrees. And that’s not really a combination for them and their success in the future.”

It was another banner year for Alabama in the NFL draft, with 10 players selected, three in the first round. The Crimson Tide now has 29 first-round picks during Saban’s tenure, a significantly higher total than the number of game losses the program has suffered in that time (21).

As always, however, Saban remains process-oriented. Getting drafted is only the beginning of success in football, he said.

“I’m really happy for our players,” Saban said. “I know it’s their dream to play at the next level. We’re very proud of the fact that we’ve had 32 guys drafted in the last three years, 22 in the last two years, and 10 this year. We wish those guys well. We want every guy in our program to get drafted as high as possible. We have some guys who have some great opportunities and we wish them well.

“I think the one thing that sometimes players don’t look at — they think about getting drafted, getting drafted, getting drafted. But that’s just the starting point. The No. 1 thing to be focused on is, what do I need to do to have a great career and play for as long as possible and be the best player I can be? Things will always work out if you can do that.”

Here are Saban’s thoughts on some other topics:

• His surgically repaired hip: “It’s great, really good. I always say they don’t make them like they used to, and there’s not many of us left. We’ve had some good medical care, great rehab, and I certainly appreciate all the thoughts and prayers, and that so many people have talked to me about that. We’re thankful for that.”

• Alabama’s Academic Progress Rate score, which was second-highest in the SEC behind only Vanderbilt: “I think that’s one of the goals of the program is for our guys to have a chance to be more successful as people. And a big part of that is that they put a lot of value themselves into graduating from school. I’m very proud that we’re one of the top teams in the conference in graduation rate and overall APR and all those types of things. We have a lot of people who do a really good job that are part of our team to make that happen.”

• NCAA rule changes, including shortening overtime and tweaking targeting fouls: “I think they’re all good rules. Most of them are all about player safety. I think that’s something that’s got to be really important to all of us in the game right now. I think they will be really positive.”

• The recovery of injured cornerback Jalyn Armour-Davis: “Jalyn’s got some medical issues now that he’s going to have to work through over the summer, but he’s certainly an outstanding athlete, a conscientious guy. He missed most of last year due to injury and was not able to participate in spring practice due to injury, but hopefully we can get him healthy and he can develop from there.”

• Team Focus, a mentoring program founded by former college football coach and TV analyst Mike Gottfried: “I think that what Mike has done is really unique, the leadership he’s shown and the example that he’s set for so many of us to try to do something and help young people. For him to try and create a family situation for some of these guys to look up to and have a chance to be successful in life, I think is really special.”

• On what might be on the agenda at this month’s SEC spring meetings: “I think probably everybody is concerned about roster management, with all the transfers, graduate transfers. Guys go out early for the draft, so it’s very difficult for some of us to manage the 85 (scholarships). Maybe we need to talk about some of the things we can to do help with those problems.”

• What he meant when he said his team lost the ‘Alabama factor’ vs. Clemson: “I think that we’ve always tried to have a team that played with a lot of discipline, very responsible and accountable and do their job at a very high level on a consistent basis. Everybody’s got to put the team first. It’s my responsibility, but the way we finished the season, I wondered about some of those things. Whether it was people worried about outcomes or losing our humility because we’d won so many games — I don’t know. We played against a really good team and got exposed, and we didn’t play our best. You always want to play your best in big games. As a coach, I’m disappointed in the job I did to help our players do that.”

On why more 5-star recruits seems to succeed at Alabama than at other schools: “I don’t know. I think what it indicates is that we do a really good job of developing players. We recruit a lot of really good players and we have a lot of good players. I think the key to the drill is, how do we get those guys to play as well as possible, for their benefit, for our benefit, for their future. We try to create value with our players in personal development, academic development, career development, and see if they can develop careers as football players. So we kind of look at it from a holistic standpoint, and I think guys become more responsible and accountable when you develop a culture of accountability around them. Being responsible for your own self-determination is what being a professional is. Someone is always going to define expectations from a standpoint of what you’re supposed to do and when you’re supposed to it, whether you’re playing for the New York Giants of working for Apple Computers. And we’re going to have guys do both. So we want to teach some things that are going to help them be successful when it comes to some of the values that really create opportunities for them.”