Not from me you haven't. I am confident that it's happening. Not so much that he will be caught.
We will see. The juicy part is that if he is caught, they will have zero championships during his tenure. Sweet!
To be clear, I meant that you haven't heard this from me particularly for "several years". I have only been saying this since last June, when I was doing research on recruiting. I was curious simply who had been in the top five the last five years, looked into it, and found that bammer had been no. 1 four out of five years. This led to further curiousity as to how that stacked against other top programs. I was shocked at the disparity.
For instance, in his time at Florida, 6 years total, Urban Meyer won two NCs. Guess how often he was no. 1? Never! Never made it. In fact, in his entire tenure, Florida was only in the top 5 three times in five years, let alone no. 1. So who has the better natural recruiting advantage, Florida or bammer? Which seems like a funner place to go to school?
In fact, in the last 10 years, which is as far back as I could find the records, only Florida under Zook in 2003 had a no. 1 recruiting class of the entire SEC! And the SEC has collectively the greatest recruting there is.
The only team that approached Saban's success was Carroll at USC. He had three straight no. 1 classes at So Cal from 2004-2006. And those are the EXACT ones he got put on probation for.
This does not constitute proof, but it reminds me of what someone said about Lance Armstrong on CNBC just this morning. "He was recovering from testicular cancer and won 7 Tour de France titles, and no one said 'Huh, what's going on here'. But in retrospect it's blindingly obvious...."
So I respectfully submit, that bammer's recruiting success simply is unrealistically good. I have every confidence that they are cheating, but who knows if the NCAA will nut up and crack them or not.