Alabama Crimson Tide

Alabama's Nick Saban says issue with satellite camps is fairness

Published Jul. 15, 2015 12:28 p.m. ET

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Satellite camps may be over for this year, but they remain one of the bigger topics of the summer in college football.

When Alabama coach Nick Saban took the podium at SEC Media Days on Wednesday, the first question wasn't about his team (a.k.a., the defending league champs and winners of three national titles this decade) but about programs like Michigan holding satellite recruiting camps outside their home regions, a practice prohibited by the SEC. Specifically, Saban was asked why he and other coaches got upset and if they felt threatened.

"I just think that I wasn't all that upset about it," Saban said. "I don't agree with it. I think that we have a recruiting calendar that clearly establishes times when you can be off campus to recruit. That's not a time where you can be off campus to recruit. So we do not feel in our league that it's a time we should be off campus to recruit."

Whether satellite camps are allowed or not, Saban believes the rules should be uniform from one major conference to the next.

"We're not just playing in our league now, we're playing in a playoff at the end of the season, so the people that play in that playoff should all do it with equal ability to recruit, be it on or off campus or whatever it is," Saban said. "I think in the NFL they do a really good job of everybody has a level playing field, and I think that's the same way that we should sort of try to operate in college football."

Saban's comments came two days after his college rival at Auburn, head coach Gus Malzahn, dismissed the threat of schools from the north being able to outrecruit the Crimson Tide and Tigers in their home territory.

(h/t: ASAP Sports for transcribing the Q&A)