Nick Saban Denies Allegations Of Giving Bad NFL Draft Advice To Plaxico Burress

College kids and bad decisions are synonymous. For some of them, asking to go to the bathroom, or requiring a hall pass to roam the halls were a reality, so naturally, it is difficult to have independent decision making in selecting a major and basing a career trajectory off of it. It’s even harder for athletes with aspirations to play professionally, as per NCAA basketball and football rules, there is a certain deadline they must commit to in order to be in the draft. Once they commit, however, they cannot go back to playing for their school, regardless of if they were selected by a team.

Nick Saban Denies Allegations Of Giving Bad NFL Draft Advice

This hardship is exacerbated even further by the advice that staff in charge of these athletes give. Recently, Nick Saban denied allegations against him of lying to former Steeler, Giant and Jet running back Plaxico Burress about his projected place in the NFL Draft. The former Michigan State coach and his ex-captain have been going through a back and forth exchange about bad advice.

The exchange started with a statement he gave to NFL.com, saying,

“I’ve never knowingly told a player any information that I get, I get from someone else. And I can’t even remember the conversation,” Saban said on ESPN’s First Take according to AL.com. “I actually left Michigan State right after the Penn State game. I didn’t stay for the bowl game when I went to LSU and that was Plax’s senior year. We’re proud of what he’s been able to do and we’re happy to see him have as much success as he’s had.”

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He later added that, “… I never ever knowingly or willingly not told the truth to any player.”

After he said this, his former player responded, tweeting:

Then, in an attempt to clarify his earlier statement, Saban followed with another response regarding the Sugar Bowl impacting the play of his players.

“We were just trying to make a point about how sometimes the timing of what they do in the NFL and how we change our calendar in college football and how they change the calendar in the NFL doesn’t always geehaw exactly like you’d like. And you know we’ve moved the draft back and we’ve moved college football games back … and we never moved the declare date back,” he said. “So it’s really no different than what the baseball coaches went through in the College World series when they were having the draft at the same time. It just seems like we ought to be able to get it to where a player can complete his college competition before he has to make the kind of decision.”

Well, thankfully, I’m no professional athlete.