If you believe Alabama wasn't recruiting Jeremiah Smith, you don't understand recruiting

College football recruiting has gone from a niche subset of the sport to something that has taken on a life of its own.

Just a few short decades ago, if you wanted to follow recruiting you almost had to seek it out, ordering magazine subscriptions and hanging out on message boards to stay on top of the latest rumors.

Now, fans can be inundated with recruiting news and factoids just by hanging out on social media, to the point where you're almost beaten over the head with it on a near daily basis.

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Since recruiting has become more accessible to the layman, more and more fans have been able to fire off takes about the once-underground aspect of college football, and with that, we also see that plenty of fans still have a lot to learn about the inner workings of it all.

Take this latest revelation, for example.

Ohio State wide receiver and former five-star prospect Jeremiah Smith recently revealed to folks at Big Ten Media Days that Alabama was his dream school growing up, but he didn't end up going there because, for whatever reason, they failed to recruit him.

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I couldn't have rolled my eyes any harder upon hearing this, but after perusing the comments section and scrolling through various social media platforms, I was shocked to see the majority of people actually believed what Smith was feeding them.

I'm going to say this up front, as clearly as I can: if you actually think the Alabama Crimson Tide weren't recruiting Jeremiah Smith, then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of recruiting.

Allow me to break it down for you.

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Jeremiah Smith wasn't just an elite, five-star player. He was the number one player in his entire recruiting class of 2024.

The kid started receiving offers from Power 4 schools in February 2021, when he was going into his freshman year of high school.

I say all that to paint the picture that this isn't some three-star safety from Iowa who grew up dreaming of playing for USC and got looked over for whatever reason.

Smith was elite from day one, forged in the crucible of South Florida high school football.

Speaking of offers from Power 4 schools, it looks like Smith got one from none other than Nick Saban and Alabama all the way back in February 2022, less than one month after he took an unofficial visit to Bama.

That doesn't sound like a guy who "wasn't being recruited by a school" to me.

I've seen some people float the theory that Saban knew he was leaving after the end of the 2023 season and so he might have checked out on recruiting, but that doesn't match up at all with what Bama's 2024 class shows us.

The Crimson Tide signed the 2nd ranked recruiting class in the country in 2024, and even landed a couple of four-star prospects from the Sunshine State, so it's not like they completely neglected Smith's home state of Florida that cycle either.

Either Smith is trolling Alabama fans - and he has been known to rile up opposing fanbases in the past (see: Miami) - or he's not telling the whole truth, and I'm inclined to think it's more of the latter than the former.

Alabama and Nick Saban ABSOLUTELY recruited Jeremiah Smith to come to Tuscaloosa.

Who wouldn't want the best player in the country to wear their uniform in college?

But I also don't think Saban recruited him quite as hard as some of the other programs that were in his final list of schools.

To recruit a five-star is to practically get down on your knees and beg them to come to your school, and I just don't believe Saban was willing to go to the lengths others were willing to.

That's not to suggest Ohio State or any of Smith's other finalists did anything nefarious. Hell, it's practically impossible to do something illegal in today's day and age of recruiting.

It's likely the Buckeyes just "wanted him more."

Besides, the Tide had a five-star wide receiver of their own in Ryan Williams, so I doubt they were willing to "break the bank" for two of the top five wideout prospects in the same class.

That just doesn't sound like something out of Saban's playbook, but I could be wrong.

All of that is to say, Alabama almost certainly "recruited" Jeremiah Smith, as did every other program and coach with a pulse in America back in 2023.

It seems like they just didn't recruit him to a level of his liking.

Which is fine, that's his prerogative, but I disagree with Smith saying that Bama flat out wasn't pursuing him.

That's simply not true, but recruiting involves the whims of 17-year-old super athletes, so perception is often reality in their minds.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: big boy recruiting is not for the faint of heart, and the Jeremiah Smith saga is just the latest example of this.