Nick Saban explains recruiting out of prep ranks vs. transfer portal, compares to NFL model

When it comes to stocking his roster at Alabama, head coach Nick Saban would prefer to do it with mostly players he recruited and signed out of high school. That doesn’t mean the Crimson Tide aren’t ready and able to mine the transfer portal as needed to fill a need.

And amid the confluence of high school recruiting and transfer portal that is early December, Saban shared some of his perspective on the new mode of roster building in college football on the “Pat McAfee Show” on Friday. Saban analogized high school recruiting to the NFL draft and the transfer portal to free agency.

“I think it’s a little bit like, most teams in the NFL like to build their team through the draft. So we like to build our team through recruiting. Bring young guys, sort of develop the culture with them that you need long term to see them develop into being good players. But I look at the portal almost like you’d look at free agency,” Saban said.

In that guise, the most sustainable (and cost-effective) way to get good and stay good is to have homegrown players, be it draft picks panning out into second contracts in the NFL or a high school recruit signing and developing into key a piece for a number of seasons in college, Saban said.

But he’s not eschewing the ability to add an established, good player at a position of need. And that’s just what the transfer portal, as well as free agency, allow a team to do.

“If a guy’s in the portal, he’s looking to go some place where he can play. So therefore, we need to have a need for that guy at that position, and if we have that need and he fits the profile of what we’re looking for at that position, then we’ll recruit those kind of guys out of the portal,” Saban said.

Alabama currently has a pair of players — wideout Jermaine Burton and safety Jaylen Key — who have both become keystone players on their respective sides of the ball after transferring in from elsewhere.

But as is ideal for Saban, they’re merely accenting the bevy of homegrown Alabama stars.

“But we still like to try to build our team with good, solid, fundamental young players that we can develop in the program that can learn the system and be here for two or three years and develop. But we’ve had some really good players out of the portal that have really helped our team in the past few years,” Saban said.