Yeah I'm not going to dwell on it too much, because like you said now we're merely speculating. I do know that Fisher, in the rant he had about Saban after Saban accused A&M of buying our roster (we did, legally, it didn't work out), was sort of close about letting the cat out of the bag.
All I will say is that for a long, long time Alabama and there 3 deep were better than 98% of the rest of CFP, and it always seemed strange that no matter how many new players came and went, and coaches they seemed to be on top.
Well, again, I can't speak for Alabama. I remember one 5* guy we were both after, where the kid would've probably been in the rotation pretty quickly with us, chose Alabama, who didn't even have a scholarship for him because they were at their cap. He grey-shirted, or something like that. All I can remember now is he went to Alabama to sit on the bench behind a slew of other guys just as talented as him, except older and more experienced so they ate up all the playing time, and he wasn't even on scholly for the first part of his career. I was pretty stunned about the whole thing.
That said....if a player believes Saban is the best coach and Alabama will be his best shot for an NFL future and the ultimate payday, is that so far-fetched? I don't know. It's not like LSU was not an NFL pipeline. But, the Saban draw is a strong one, even a lot of players who did sign and play for us have said as much.
As for Fisher letting the cat out of the bag, I guess he would know about stuff going on at LSU better than I would. I'm just noting that for the years when Fisher was our OC under Saban, I don't know of any scandals hinted at, let alone with some evidence to back them up, and given what I know about the C.D. in that era, it seems unlikely to me.
otoh, there are fans who say otherwise. Don't know if you've been here long enough to remember 25 4 Heisman, but he said that kind of stuff goes on everywhere and he knew for sure that LSU players got a little spending money under the table. How reliable he was, who can say. It's certainly not hard to believe. My own feeling is that if something unusual or persistent was going on, I should've heard the chatter and smelled the smoke.
