Alabama Football: In reprimands Greg Sankey came up one short

On Wednesday night, Alabama football coach Nick Saban did not accuse Texas A&M of cheating. He also did not single out Jimbo Fisher. What Saban said was the Aggies, through their NIL collective, bought every player in their 2022 signing class.

Thursday morning during a streamed hissy fit, Jimbo Fisher took strong exception to Saban’s claim. He also went way too far by turning the disagreement into a personal attack.

Alabama Football Coach Receives SEC Reprimand

Also on Thursday, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey reprimanded both coaches. Nick Saban stated he was wrong to single out the A&M  and Jackson State programs. Sankey had no choice in reprimanding the coaches, but he failed in not also reprimanding Texas A&M AD, Ross Bjork.

As Ross Dellinger reported, Bjork said,

"I don’t know why Nick Saban would say what he said except he’s threatened. There is a saying … an emperor who loses their dynasty lashes out.I guess people don’t like A&M disrupting the power base of college football."

The Bjork comment was also a personal attack and Greg Sankey should have called him out for it.

Bjork left the AD job at Ole Miss in 2019 to take the same position in College Station. As Saturday Down South wrote three years ago, Ole Miss fans were not sad to see him go.

Though Bjork did not hire Hugh Freeze, he was his boss while Freeze got Ole Miss in trouble for cheating. At the least, that close professional association is a major blemish on Bjork’s career record. The NCAA penalized Ole Miss heavily. The ESPN story from 2019 said,

"The NCAA panel on infractions said the school lacked institutional control and fostered “an unconstrained culture of booster involvement in football recruiting.”"

Bjork and Ole Miss fired Hugh Freeze, as Bjork explained to Paul Finebaum because Freeze’s

"conduct is not acceptable when you are a leader in his position and we had to move forward from there."

The conduct in question was in part a phone call or calls to an escort service. Ole Miss said there were “more personal failings” by Freeze but declined to elaborate.

Ole Miss and Bjork did not fire Freeze for cheating and contended he ran a clean program. Maybe Ross Bjork has an unusual perspective on what constitutes a clean program. Some in college football thought that not only did Ole Miss cheat, but it did so blatantly.

What happened at Ole Miss is subject to varied opinions, as is what has happened at Texas A&M. A variety of opinions does not change that neither Jimbo Fisher nor Ross Bjork are serving their fine institution well with their attempts to make Nick Saban a devil incarnate. And that does not change, no matter how many people agree with them.