coaching and blackjack

Think of coaches as card counters and the recruiting situation at a college as the blackjack game. What Saban has at Alabama in terms of recruiting is like card counting a single deck, dealer stand on soft 17, unlimited splits, blackjack pays 3:2, deal to the end of the deck before shuffling type of game. Being the coach at Arkansas, on the other hand, is like card counting a 6:5 game, dealer hits on soft 17, no resplits, 8 decks, with less than 50 percent shoe penetration. There’s just no way to win over time in that kind of situation. So perhaps it’s not so much our coaches aren’t good coaches but rather the recruiting conditions are just too stacked against them to having the kind of lasting success that we all want.