Alabama football coach Nick Saban has never claimed to be a magician.
Otherwise, the starting quarterback of the 2015 Crimson Tide would suddenly introduce himself.
“Somebody’s got to make it happen,” Saban said Saturday afternoon in a news conference. “As bad as I would like to make it happen, I can’t make it happen. If it doesn’t get decided, like when AJ (McCarron) and Phillip Sims were here (in 2011) – they both played a quarter, a quarter, a quarter and a quarter in the first game, and that’s how we figured it out.
“Do I want it to happen that way? No, but I can’t make this happen. As bad as everyone wants it to happen and create this great hope, I can’t make it happen.”
The Crimson Tide held their first scrimmage of the preseason Saturday inside Bryant-Denny Stadium, which consisted of roughly 110 plays. In the brief portion early in the workout that was open to the media, the quarterbacks were lined up by seniority – fifth-year senior Jacob Coker, redshirt junior Alec Morris, redshirt sophomore Cooper Bateman, redshirt freshman David Cornwell and true freshman Blake Barnett.