Nick Saban explains the art of flipping commitments on National Signing Day

National Signing Day and the early signing period are tense events, ones that leave college football coaches holding their breath hoping they’ve sufficiently crossed their Ts and dotted their Is. It’s also flipping season.

Every year there are a handful of recruits who get away at the last minute.

And now there’s even further reason for recruits to consider changing their commitment in the 11th hour. Money. So how do coaches prepare for flipping season?

“I think that it’s a very good question,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said Thursday on the Pat McAfee Show. “I think there’s one sort of factor involved in recruiting now that did not used to be involved in recruiting, and that’s the whole concept of, I don’t want to say it’s pay for play, but name, image and likeness has turned into something very similar to that.”

Flipping season does work both ways, though. While coaches can be victimized by their recruits flipping at the last minute, they can also steal last-minute recruits.

Alabama did so twice on National Signing Day, flipping running back Kevin Riley from Miami and athlete Aeryn Hampton from Texas.

Saban explained there are just different priorities for some recruits than others.

“So what you have in some cases is you have players who are looking to create value for the future, they’re looking to go to a program where they can have a good quality of life but at the same time their personal development, their academic development, their career development on and off the field are the things that are most important to their family,” Saban said.

“Then you have some people that are just looking for where can I make the best deal?”

The introduction of legalized NIL has created a system where as players don’t materialize in a class, sometimes funding that might have been allocated toward certain members of the class can be shuffled elsewhere.

Teams can get more firepower in their pitch late.

That’s why you have to be aware of the second type of recruit, the one who is out looking for the best deal.

“Sometimes those factors change toward the end and you have to be aware of which guys are solid, which guys are coming here for the reasons that you really recruited them, which was to create value for the future and try to allow them to have a really good quality of life while you’re doing that, but at the same time knowing that there’s guys out there that are looking and searching for where can I make the best deal?” Saban said.

You have to balance your class so you don’t have too many guys that are looking for a deal at the end, potentially flipping at the last second.

“And you’ve got to try to recruit enough guys on the board that are good players that they can complement each one of these types of guys that are making these decisions,” Saban said. “So there’s a few more factors involved in where guys go to school than there used to be.”