This era of NIL has been brutal for the Alabama Crimson Tide, and programs from the SEC are taking advantage of their vulnerabilities.
Turns out, there’s only room for one “Hollywood” on a football team.
The Hollywood Smothers era in Tuscaloosa has officially ended less than a week after he not just committed to the University of Alabama, but enrolled in classes as well.
Smothers, in turn, was poached heavily by the University of Texas, despite his enrollment.
The Longhorns have had the upper hand over the Crimson Tide over the past 24 hours.
Not only did they start off this run by beating Alabama in basketball last night, but they pried away Alabama’s top wide receiver target Cam Coleman, and now Smothers.
So what does this mean for Alabama?
It means it needs to go back to work, and it needs to do so quickly..
Because now, after over a decade of dominance as the college football standard, other programs are walking all over the Tide in terms of working the transfer portal in their favor.
In this era of NIL, the college football landscape has turned into the Wild Wild West, and it’s only gotten more aggressive.
Payments for players have raised substantially, perks have gotten more outrageous, and over-the-top promises have been made.
It has left Alabama’s staff playing catch-up while the best players are coming off the board quickly.
To an SEC rival, no less.
When the portal opened, one of Alabama’s top targets was offensive tackle, Jacarrius Peak from NC State. The Tide had locked him in for a visit, but before Peak arrived in T-Town, he had committed to the University of South Carolina.
The same thing happened to defensive end Jordan Ross from Tennessee. The Alabama native, Ross had a visit to Tuscaloosa locked in, and had initially teased that he may have been thinking about committing to the Tide, by posting a childhood picture of him draped in Alabama garb on Instagram.
That picture was deleted an hour later.
Shortly after, Ross ended up committing to LSU.
For Kalen DeBoer and Courtney Morgan, they need to quickly adapt in this era of college football, or else they’ll get left behind.
They have done a fantastic job at recruiting at the high school level, but when it comes to the portal, they’re getting destroyed by their peers in this cycle.
After the Rose Bowl debacle, Alabama lost 39 players to either the NFL, the portal, or players who have run out of eligibility. It’s a number that reflects the modern landscape, but still places Alabama among the hardest-hit programs this offseason.
Coming in, they currently have seven players from the portal, as well as 23 freshman or JUCO signings.
Will the NCAA address what college football has become? At this point it’s hard to say since it’s gotten more aggressive ever since NIL was introduced and programs have found loopholes to get by.
But if it doesn’t, early returns suggest that Alabama may be in big trouble.