H2 For You: It's Clear Now, Alabama Basketball's Best Ally is Football

If you’re anyone like me, you’ve wondered why college basketball coaches take high school recruits to football games while they’re visiting campus. If you’re not like me, then good on you, because in wondering I’ve ignored the benefits and thought of it only as a weak, unrelated selling point.

Wrong. That is, at least in the University of Alabama's case.

It took until last Saturday to realize why coaches do it, in particular Crimson Tide basketball’s Nate Oats.

'Why wouldn’t he?' I asked as the counterargument grew to my original bit-of-a-side-show opinion upon surfing social media and seeing basketball-related chants from the student section.

Those inside Bryant-Denny Stadium weren’t there only to watch the Crimson Tide play Southern Miss, but to make an audible impression to some of the highest-rated basketball recruits in the country that 'Look, we may win the national championship in football fairly often but that won’t diminish our interest in Alabama hoops, the defending SEC champion.

'We’re telling you our interest is greater than ever, really. You must know, we want you here enough to harmoniously indicate such. '

That was the impression.

What a passive, persuasive and (in)direct tactic of talent acquisition by Oats, who sat back while Crimson Tide target Brandon Miller — one specific recipient and one of the top forwards in the 2022 class — lived in the moment with his folks.

“Brandon Miller!” chants alluded to Alabama bear hugging its ‘Championship School’ mantra born originally by Oats and spread by its students and supporters alike.

One name echoed singularly on one Tuscaloosa evening correctly summarizes why the Crimson Tide’s third-year coach compellingly, while calculatedly, announced the school’s best recruiting pitch to date last spring.

Mind you, all this after the Alabama basketball staff showcased why its momentum, approach and ground-gaining direction is distinct for a player whose options are as limitless as Bobby Axelrod spinoffs strolling down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue for some R&R.

There's supposed basketball schools, other schools and schools with variations of similar reputations, but a night game of Crimson Tide football is quite the ending for a how-to symposium of analytics, three-point shooting and positionless, NBA-replica hoops hosted by Oats and Co.

And quite the opposite of a side show, too, unlike my original thought.

Ultimately, though, it was (non)verbal messaging from Alabama's staff of, 'Yeah, we can offer this and that, but how about all of it?' Reiterated by an added, 'Where else can you find this?'

I call what happened Saturday night supplementary data in human form, and though Alabama hasn't yet received a commitment in the senior class, it's like bonus points for a class you've aced already.

But none of this is up to me, it's up to Miller and a number of other Alabama targets, all of which having many options from which to choose, too.

NIL-appealing promotions, the growth of individual player recognition and coinciding cultural elements of basketball — social media followings dwarfing that of touted prep football prospects — all make for All-American-level high school players knowing they don't need Duke or Kentucky or North Carolina.

You can make a name for yourself anywhere like you can reach the NBA from anywhere, unlike an expired approach of blue blood programs necessitating each better than all, that is thanks to inevitabilities of the aforementioned factors and then some.

Subsequent to the pivoted trend, besides the differing degrees of player development, fit, etc., is a campus and program that can offer more, not necessarily as extracurriculars but as a broader appeal off the court.

And a school which best can represent success in its permeation.

Like "Where Legends Are Made."