TUSCALOOSA -- The NCAA will consider an early signing period for football, as well as the addition of a 10th assistant coach, it announced Wednesday. And Alabama’s Nick Saban took some strong stances on them both.

The recruiting proposal would make accommodations for two, 72-hour early signing periods beginning on the last Wednesday in June and in mid-December, according to the NCAA. The December date is also the initial time junior college players can sign a National Letter of Intent. But Saban was adamant in how he views the possibility of an early signing period.

“I am absolutely, positively against any kind of early signing date, especially a June signing date before a guy plays his senior year,” Saban said during his post-practice press conference. “If we wanted to have an early signing date after the season, then I would be more for that.

“But we moved the recruiting calendar forward, which creates lots of issues and problems when it comes to -- not only evaluation of the guy as a player, but more importantly in the evaluation of his character, what kind of person he is, what’s his academic status, does he have his academic requirements up to his junior year, what’s his test score? So you’re trying to make decisions about guys way ahead.

“I’ve always talked about football being a developmental game, and that doesn’t give the guy that’s a little bit of a late bloomer that maybe does a good job in maybe camp over the summer and has a really good senior season. There are gonna be more and more guys sign early, we’re gonna have more and more guys visiting, we’ll have guys visiting in the summer. I just really don’t get that. I mean I really just don’t get that.”

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This proposal would make it difficult for players like running back Joshua Jacobs to end up at programs like Alabama. Jacobs was a late bloomer on the recruiting trail and was not on the Crimson Tide’s radar until late last year.

“Probably not,” Saban said, “because we would probably be full. And that’s what I’m talking about. We would probably make some academic, character and maybe evaluation mistakes because you don’t even see a guy play in his senior season. And then the other things, from a high school coaches standpoint, what is really the guy’s motivation to play and really work hard for his team in his senior year?

“… Every player should have the opportunity to make official visits, to develop relationships, and now you’re doing that earlier and earlier and earlier, which I just don’t see it.”

The NCAA is also considering increasing the limit on the number of assistant coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision from nine to 10. That idea created a completely different reaction from the Alabama head coach, who is in favor.

“I think that one of the big things is for the number of players that we have involved, if you do a player-coach ratio in any sport, football is the least,” Saban said. “I mean we have the most players, but ratio-wise, we have the least number of coaches. I think it’s always difficult with nine to break up your staff in a way that -- special teams has become a really important part of the game, and for a guy to try to coach a position and be the special teams coach is really, really difficult.

“I’ve been advocate so that we can have a special teams coach. I think it would help from a numbers standpoint, in terms of ratio. And then you’d have five coaches on offense and four on defense, and it’s much workable staff-wise if you have it that way.”

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