Even during global health crisis, rest of college football chasing ’Bama, SEC

All this news the last few days about Alabama finding a way to streamline getting information to football players probably shouldn’t be as surprising as a lot of people appear to be.

With these new-fangled Apple Watches they can apparently act like a mini-tablet strapped to somebody’s wrist. I haven’t jumped into that water, yet, so a lot of this is not based on personal experience.

But you just figured the Crimson Tide, led by maybe the most paranoid coach in the history of college football, wasn’t going to stay disconnected long from the players. They just sorta shrugged and put a building of people to work figuring out a way.

Nick Saban said Thursday his new strength and conditioning staff equipped Alabama players with Apple Watches for the players’ training away from campus.

“They were very instrumental in setting up this whole program of what we’re doing with the players in terms of Apple Watches for their workouts, apps on their phones for weight training programs,” Saban said in a teleconference last week.

How was Alabama allowed to do this … or are they the only ones anybody’s discovered?

When the current global health pandemic forced changes at every university the first thought in the sports world was football coaches will figure out a way to keep control … somehow.

According to multiple reports, Alabama is using the watching to monitor players’ health, looking at sleep patters and heart spikes on each player.

The players who didn’t already have an Apple Watch were provided one before they left campus.

Alabama’s position is they are only looking at sleep patterns and activity level to monitor the players’ health and wellness. Of course they aren’t doing anything to oversee workouts.

“The SEC is aware that Alabama provided Apple Watches to some of our student-athletes,” Alabama’s compliance guy said in a statement.

If anybody else figured this out it’s not as big of a deal as the Crimson Tide doing it.

Again, though, nobody should be surprised. Alabama has won more games over the last 13 years than anybody else in college football (152 games) and that isn’t an accident.

Some other coaches, though, are getting whiny over the whole thing. They view it as Alabama and, by extension, the SEC getting a competitive advantage. It’s probably not a stretch if we find out other schools are ordering these things and getting them to the players as fast as possible.

Even during a global shutdown the rest of college football is chasing Alabama and the rest of the SEC.