Andre Smith, Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Sugar-Bowl, has spoken out concerning his elimination from the postseason roster at Alabama.
"It was just a bad decision," Smith said. "I went to talk to coach (Nick) Saban about it, and he thought it was best to protect the team. I hurt, I cried, I shed some tears, I talked to my teammates about it. But it had nothing to do with an agent."
Aww, Julio, we miss you too.
Two possibilities here:
1. This really is about an agent, however tangentially; the initial rumors about unauthorized contact with some unauthorized person were true, and Smith is trying for some wiggle room by pointing out that technically, the person who actually did the actual interacting was a booster/relative/other entity who was not an actual agent, actually.
2. Something funnier happened.
Speculations, go.
(In other jolly Alabama news, the scoreboard at Bryant-Denny is on fire. The jokes write themselves some days.)