2013 Signing Day is tomorrow and CNS is bringing in another good group of players. RollBamaRoll takes a look back at the 2008 class. The class that brought Bama back!
The moment when I realized that fortunes were truly about to change for Bama football came in the winter before the 2008 season. Though I had scarcely followed recruiting to that point, while perusing the sports pages of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution one morning I stumbled across their “Super Southern 100” ranking of the best high school senior football players in the south. As I recall, twelve of the 100 stars identified themselves as Bama commits at the time with no other school garnering more than two or three. While many were still undecided, it was clear that Nick Saban was selling the program much more effectively than his predecessor and running proverbial laps around his peers at neighboring schools. Now that the book is officially closed on the class of 2008, a look back reveals that the group managed to serve as a foundation for an impending dynasty but also a reminder that recruiting rankings are, at best, an inexact science.
Starting from the top, future classes will be hard pressed to duplicate the bumper crop of elite producers that showed up on campus in 2008. Terrence Cody, Marcell Dareus, Mark Ingram, Julio Jones, Courtney Upshaw, Mark Barron, Dont’a Hightower, Barrett Jones, and Robert Lester all became virtual household names in SEC country. Collectively, that group includes five first-round NFL draft picks (thus far) and two second-round picks, a Heisman trophy winner, an Outland trophy winner, a slew of All-America selections and a couple of BCS Championship Game MVPs. It is difficult to express the impact that these men had on the Alabama program, literally restoring it to levels not seen in Tuscaloosa since the seventies. The sobering reality is that we may never see a collection of top-end contributors like this in a single class again.
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