Mom rips Alabama coach Nick Saban for blocking her son's transfer request

Published Nov. 15, 2016 3:49 p.m. ET

Aaron Torres

It’s a story that gets played out several times throughout the year, and pretty much everyone has the same reaction: Fill-in-the-blank college football player (or occasionally basketball) wants to transfer schools. School won’t let him. Outrage ensues. Nine times out of 10, the school backs off, and let’s the kid go where he wants.

Again, it’s a story that’s almost as old as college football and itself, and usually not worthy of mention here. But in the case of Maurice Smith, it is worth mentioning on this Wednesday. That’s because Maurice Smith is currently a defensive back at Alabama. The coach blocking him from transferring is Nick Saban. And the school he’s trying to transfer to is Georgia, where he would hope to play for former ‘Bama assistant coach Kirby Smart, who is now in charge in Athens.

Unfortunately, Saban isn’t having it, and now Smith’s mom isn’t having it either. She spoke with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s ‘Dawg Nation’ and vented her frustrations.

"The university is continuing to be resistant to any request to release my son. That’s where we are,” Samyra Smith said. “In (Saban’s) mind, the best decision is for him to stay here. And he doesn’t think anything other than that is best for the kid. …"

“They’re being difficult. Intentionally,” Samyra Smith said. “It’s his choice. It should be his choice, if he wants to leave here, he should be able to do that. ….

“He wants to go where he feels like he’ll have the level of success he wants to have. It may work, it may not. But it should be his choice."

So a couple thoughts here.

The obvious initial response is to say ‘oh boy, here is typical big, bad Nick Saban, blocking the transfer of a key player, to a big-time SEC rival.’ It makes sense, and I get it. Many of you believe that a kid should be free to transfer wherever he likes, and I get that too. Simply put, it isn’t a good look, especially for a coach as good as Saban. How could Saban --- a guy with a team that just won a title eight months ago --- be so afraid of one kid? Even worse, it seems like Saban is blocking the transfer in general. Even worse, it appears as though Saban is blocking Smith from transferring anywhere. Even if Georgia is the stated choice.

That last part is disappointing, but if this is about Georgia, well it’s kind of hard to blame Saban either. This would be a current Alabama player, hoping to transfer to play for a former Alabama assistant coach. In Saban’s mind (at least in theory) he’s got to be thinking ‘if I let one kid transfer to play for my former assistant’ what’s to stop others from doing the same? What’s to stop every kid who doesn’t like his spot on the depth chart, or who has a bad day or week at practice from trying to skip town? The fact that Georgia is an SEC rival certainly doesn’t help, but doesn’t feel like the only angle here. Especially since the Tide don’t play the Dawgs at all this season.

It’s also worth noting that for any Georgia fan who is frustrated by Saban keeping a player from joining the Dawgs, Smart made national headlines when he did the same thing earlier this spring, and didn’t allow Georgia players to transfer to play for their former coach Mark Richt at Miami.

Clearly it’s a complicated issue and hopefully it resolved peacefully.

But this isn’t the normal transfer story that we’re used to reading about.