Happy Monday, everyone. The softball team did what they were supposed to this weekend in sweeping SEC doormat Kentucky. Baseball managed to salvage one of three in Austin, which isn’t too bad on the road against the 2nd-ranked team in the nation.
The NFL Draft starts Thursday, and Nick Kelly has compiled for you a list of “expert” predictions on where Alabama’s players will land. There is consensus on Kadyn Proctor extending the Tide’s first round streak, but predictions on Ty Simpson are mixed.
The
biggest news of the weekend came last night, when Amari Allen announced his intention to declare for the NBA Draft while maintaining eligibility.
The good news is that he mentions Nate Oats by name and says nothing about the transfer portal, which suggests that the decision will be between the draft and returning to Alabama. Oats typically recommends that they stay in the draft only if they are assured a guaranteed deal and not a two-way. We’ll have to wait and see how his prep goes.
Freshman guard Davion Hannah is hitting the portal.
Alabama guard Davion Hannah plans to enter the NCAA transfer portal, On3’s Joe Tipton confirmed. He is a former Top 50 recruit.
Hannah appeared in 10 games for the Crimson Tide this past season as a true freshman. He averaged 3.3 points and 1.9 rebounds during that time across 12.7 minutes per game. He also shot 46.2% from the field.
Hannah last played for Alabama on Dec. 17 before a “medical condition” kept him out for the rest of the year, head coach Nate Oats previously said. Oats also confirmed that Hannah would seek a medical redshirt, which would give him four full years of eligibility left.
Hannah showed flashes, but they were brief. Best of luck to him.
Bryant Haines, Indiana’s defensive coordinator, showed himself to be quite thin skinned this weekend after these comments from Ty Simpson on a podcast.
“From my point of view, I was like, they don’t do much,” he said. “They do the same thing every down. So when I got the ball, I knew exactly what was going to happen. They just didn’t mess up, bro. They were in the exact same spot they were supposed to be. They were so well-coached.
“It was so much different than the SEC. In the SEC, they’ll play man, they’ll do these unorthodox coverages. That’s kind of how it is. That game was crazy to me. Of course, I got hurt. So that was a bummer. I knew what they were going to do. We couldn’t really run the ball, didn’t really throw. It was just so crazy to me how it happened.”
Emphasis mine. Somehow, Haines took that comment as a slight.
“Adorable,” Haines wrote on social media. “We also saw everything they were doing, on every single snap… It’s just that we exploited those cues. And didn’t get frozen and crushed by them.”
After some pushback on social media for the comment, Haines doubled down.
“That’s all it took to break your entire fanbase?” He wrote. “Wow.. maybe I should’ve just said “Boo”. No apologies, no compliments. Grow up folks. He had a bad take and I said the painful truth. Bounce back better.
Somebody definitely needs to do some growing up, Bryant.
Last, the folks at Sports Business Journal believe that the power leagues in college football will consolidate media rights in order to drive the value higher, perhaps as much as doubling it in a decade’s time. Some of this would be good for fans, but some not so much.
– Choosing from a more robust selection of bidders — especially those who haven’t been able to purchase these rights previously. The Power Four conferences have licensed exclusively to traditional linear broadcasters, locking out all major digital streaming companiesincluding Netflix, Amazon and YouTube, which have significantly higher market caps, much bigger/growing advertising businesses, global distribution, and demonstrated intent, having made billion-dollar rights purchases from single sellers NFL (Amazon, YouTube Sunday Ticket) and NBA (Amazon). All while streaming (47%) has surpassed linear viewing (43%) as the preference of Americans, per Nielsen.
– Creating more good games (e.g., top 25 vs. top 25, Power Four vs. Power Four), limiting Power Four schools to just one mediocre matchup per year instead of two or three currently. In 2025, out of 408 total Power Four games, only 11% (45) matched ranked vs. ranked teams. These produced 32% of season viewership.
– Spreading out the best Saturday games, instead of playing many head-to-head, using the same AI scheduling software as major leagues.
Conferences working together to create more marquee non-conference matchups would be awesome. Making college football fans carry all of those streaming services to see them would not, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen in the pro leagues. Get ready for it though, it’s coming.
That’s about it for today. Have a great week.
Roll Tide.
