CECIL HURT: Turnaround won’t happen overnight

The opening days of 2007 football practice at the University of Alabama have engendered the usual excitement, particularly over the newcomers to the Crimson Tide football team.

It’s easy to lose sight of something in the midst of that excitement, though. In terms of Nick Saban football, they are all still newcomers.

The incoming freshmen now have two practice days under Saban to their credit as they head into today’s Fan Day workout. The veterans, on the other hand, have now completed their 16th and 17th practices — better, but hardly a wealth of experience.

“There’s still a learning curve in effect,” he said on Saturday.

Astutely, Saban pointed out the traffic on the curve travels in both directions. The obvious process is the players are learning from the coaches, but at the same time, the coaches are learning as well.

Over the course of the spring, they were able to replicate some situations.

As August wears on there will be more full-speed work. But until Sept. 1, Saban and his staff will have no way of knowing exactly how any of the Tide players will respond in a game situation. They can predict, but that’s all.

“That’s not saying anything about the way things were done before,” Saban said. “It’s just different.

“It’s a lot of things, like team chemistry. There was good carryover with the players from spring practice from a mental standpoint,” Saban said. “We were very pleased with that in terms of the approach that we were able to take to the field for the first day.”

“Good carryover,” however, doesn’t mean that all the necessary fundamental information has been installed. Saban talked at length about how repetition and retention helps to reduce errors.

Practice will take care of that, but the fact is, a year or two down the road, things will come more easily for the players who have been tested in Saban’s system than they will in 2007. And Alabama football history suggests it is the first-year transition, even more than any of the well-documented defensive depth issues, that should serve to temper expectations for this year.

The fact is, every Crimson Tide coach has had an adjustment period. The roll call of initial-season records going back for almost 50 years reveals just how difficult it is — 4-9 for Mike Shula, preceded by 7-5, 4-7, 7-5, 7-5, 8-4 and 5-4-1. It is not coincidental that the sub-.500 records were complied by coaches who had never held a head coaching job before, and some of the other coaches perhaps didn’t possess Saban’s prowess on the sidelines. But some of those coaches — including Paul Bryant, who posted the 5-4-1 mark — were darn good. Transitions are just difficult, under the best of circumstances.

It does make a difference that Saban, while he is learning his personnel, isn’t also trying to learn how to be a head coach. He already knows that skill set. But experience also has taught Saban that one spring — or one spring and one weekend, which is where the Saban era now stands — isn’t enough to accomplish all the teaching that needs to be done. That’s true even when the teacher is smart, tough and efficient.