HEY EVERYONE IT’S YOUR BUDDY AT THE BARBERSHOP NICK

As far as we know, the Alabama Crimson Tide were the first football team to put a waterfall in a training facility. There are other firsts, sure: Clemson is the first (and only team so far) to put a slide into their building, Oregon was the first to build in individual climate control systems for each player’s locker, and Texas A&M is the first to give Jimbo Fisher $75 million guaranteed to be their football coach.

That last one has nothing to do with football facilities—unless we find a way to count Jimbo Fisher as a facility. We can do that: The hair plugs make him a farm, and Texas A&M’s accountants can write off his pay as a loss on the possible yield of the hair-crop. The funny part is not this joke—you knew that already—but that Texas A&M’s accounting staff have probably already built this argument into their tax profile for 2018. The depreciation on a 52 year old man from West Virginia can be simply unreal.

Alabama had that first waterfall, though they might have tied with Clemson on the formal in-house barber shop concept. Clemson will have one as part of their new facility, but Bama’s is up and running already. Is it a real shop? Yeah, it’s full-service. Is it nice? Like anything Alabama does, we assume it cost a thousand percent more than any other program would have spent on it. Was it torn up three times while Nick Saban ranted about a slightly crooked electrical outlet? Undoubtedly. Does it feature one really elite, five-star barber and four almost equally elite guys waiting for playing time behind him? All of whom could start at any other barber shop in the land? Absolutely.

Oh, and the most important question: Is it being used for recruiting already? Well let’s just take a look at this fun, casual video from...Alabama, the program known for being excuse us—

[coughs for three minutes before spitting out the next three words]

—fun and casual. Guests are random and just showed up! Guests like:

OH HEY. Look, it’s actual living battle droid and NFL Pro Bowl wide receiver Julio Jones, maybe the best wide receiver of his generation. Coincidentally, he’s just stopping by to talk about the completely normal topic of work. Work, amirite? It’s crazy. Julio plays in the NFL, but he’s just stopping by to say hi and get a trim and catch up up with his friends.

Friends? Which friends? Why, it’s—

Eddie Jackson! He’s just stopping by, too. Eddie plays for the Chicago Bears, in the NFL, where he starts at safety. Yeah, now that you mention it, he went to Alabama, too, before that thing where he went and played in the NFL. Also coincidence, because he’s just there for a cut and some camaraderie, too. Anyone else?

Ryan Anderson is just getting some pointers from his friend Julio and catching up with his pal Eddie. He signed with Washington and makes millions of dollars even if he really has only just started his NFL career. Millions! Hope he tips well, which he can do since he’s not an amateur athlete and is therefore allowed to have money and be a consumer.

Just some dudes hanging out, no big thing, hey wait there’s one more—

If we were Lane Kiffin we would take this still, store it in our phone, and make sure we texted it to Nick’s personal cell phone at least once a week for the rest of his life. If you are Lane Kiffin, and you are reading this now, do it, just do what we say and text Nick this exact image. Preferably text it to him at the point in the day when you know he is most stressed, like when he has to shoot online video segments for recruiting, like when he’s doing a Bama Cuts segment. He might try to have you killed. That’s fine, you’ve been dead before and it all worked out just fine in the end. Just had to transfer in LAX once.

Anyway, Bama has a barber shop, they shoot short videos in it, and the message definitely isn’t that if you go to Alabama you will definitely end up in the NFL. Nope, not one bit.

P.S. We didn’t do this