Re: Spring Practice Thread (Interviews, Press Conferences, Practice Reports)
if you aren't consistent with putting forward relevant and reliable facts, then either other people have to waste their time to fact check it themselves (totally not worth it) or they may just figure your reasons are not reasons at all.
I will elaborate further because it appears you've had limited engagement here but real interest in how we discuss things. I interpreted your initial comments as "do you even fact check, bro?" and clarified
I do when warranted. The month someone committed, or whether they are arrived in spring or fall is of no great consequence to this discussion. You are in correct though in that being factual matters and I appreciate your concern about credibility. However, plenty of substantiated facts have been presented in this discussion. For instance, I made comments regarding Bateman's play in comparison to others, and then I provided that data to allow everyone to arrive to their own conclusions. Not just Bateman's statistics from last year, but also I provided statistics from Gmac/AJ/Blake/Coker.
I appreciate it when someone provides corrected information, it is helpful. I've been wrong before thinking something happened in the fourth instead of the third quarter and so on. However, I'll apologize right now if I give anyone a hard time over trivial details. As long as at the core of the discussion we are being factual, minor inconsistencies in terms of largely irrelevant facts are inconsequential in my mind. Did Bateman's stats matter? I thought so and I looked them up. Did Saban's comments about not having a starter matter? Yes, so I looked it up, precisely for the reasons you outlined. I can't help but view some of your comments about facts as being selective (perhaps inadvertently) since you appear oblivious to this distinction of what is
anecdotal (narrative) and what is
pertinent (
relevant) while belaboring the point. I would be wary of the use of sophistry here.
To get back to the issue one big question is regarding Bateman's performance in the Ole Miss game and how we should view it. I do think it is easy to overly fixate on that, but that's a major point of contention in this discussion. I think the truth is probably somewhere in between the two extremes and the rest is mainly our subjective opinion.
I specifically saw Bateman's performance compared to AJ's performance coming in as a backup in the Auburn game. I view that as one extreme, perhaps just hyperbole. I incorrectly stated that AJ came in during the middle of a drive, and then fact checked myself and provided the corrected information in this thread. AJ, as a redshirt freshman, came into the Auburn game for Alabama's final drive after Gmac was sacked on the final play of the previous drive. There were 46 seconds left in the game, Alabama had the ball on their own 19 yard line, they were trailing by one point, and AJ was facing the eventual national champions. I have trouble imagining a more difficult scenario to be thrust into. At no point in the year did I see anything about AJ being a realistic candidate to start, I am unaware of his spending meaningful time with the 1s. I don't think he was prepared to be a starter and by all appearances he was thrust into a nearly impossible situation with only moments to prepare. I can not find the logical connection to this and Bateman's start against Ole Miss.
That's one extreme. The other extreme is that Bateman had every bit of preparation that Jacob Coker had. The idea that everything was split evenly and that Bateman and Coker were prepared in the exact same manner. I think it would be ridiculous for Alabama to publicly float the notion of Bateman as a potential starter, then let Coker spend all the time with the 1s in practice. Other than applying common sense, we won't know this for sure because media viewing times were limited. The observations I saw were just that of quarterbacks throwing in a line (and one specific note saying none of them looked good). Logic dictates that both quarterbacks spent at least some time with the 1s (otherwise that in and of itself would prove who the starter was). That part will remain subject to speculation. The part that is not though is the fact that Coker did end up spending more time with the starters in actual games, and he was more experienced overall. This to me prevents this extreme from being correct as well.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle. I rejected the assertion that Bateman was "thrown to the wolves" not because it was an inaccurate way to describe a first start coming against Ole Miss, but simply because all the information I had indicated the Alabama coaches had made an effort to prepare both quarterbacks to start not just leading up to this game but leading up to the others as well. Once we get past each extreme, we are entering a highly subjective part of the discussion. This is the part in which we're throwing opinions and ideas out there, and much like the Blake Sims debate, we won't really get some answers until the season starts. It gives us a way to pass time, and I recall during the Blake Sims discussion making a comment along the lines of, "this is what I believe but we'll just have to see".
I think Bateman has the capacity to win at Alabama. I don't know yet if he is or should be the starter. He's the front-runner, but I believe this will continue to be interesting not just because of the talent behind him, but because we have seen Bateman stumble. He might be better for that though, but how do we know until we see him in another tough situation? Until then we'll keep discussing things and tossing ideas out there.
