TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — Most of Tuscaloosa woke up in a daze Dec. 2. Alabama's Iron Bowl meltdown was still fresh two days later, but Crimson Tide linebackers coach Lance Thompson was up early that Monday morning.
There was no time to sulk. A small nine-seat private plane was waiting for him at Tuscaloosa Regional Airport. It departed at 7:37 a.m., bound for Elizabethtown, Ky., where Thompson would meet with five-star defensive lineman Matt Elam.
That short flight kicked off the whirlwind that is the last two months of college football's other season – the recruiting sprint to National Signing Day. Between Dec. 2, 2013, and Feb. 1 of this year (save for a Dec. 16-Jan. 15 dead period mandated by the NCAA), head coaches and their staffs crisscrossed the nation, logging thousands of miles trying to lure the most coveted recruits of what would be the Class of 2014.
Not even perhaps the most successful coach in the nation was immune to becoming just another frequent flyer in search of new talent. To determine just how frenzied this period was for Nick Saban, AL.com, through the Freedom of Information Act, obtained the logs of the 24-year-old plane (N1UA) registered to the Crimson Tide Foundation — the fundraising arm of the Alabama athletics department — that carried Saban and his staff to their destinations. (The plane's movements cannot be accessed otherwise because the school had the tail number blocked from flight-tracking websites.)
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The aircraft – an 1125 Westwind Astra built by Israel Aircraft Industries in 1990 – made 66 trips marked "football recruiting" on the logs. Saban was on board for 53. The plane touched down in 15 states from coast to coast. It logged nearly 53 hours of flight time leading up to National Signing Day on Feb. 5.
N1UA made trips as short as 10 minutes (between Gadsden and Talladega) and as long as four-plus hours (from Tuscaloosa to Long Beach, Calif.). Every assistant coach made at least one trip, with defensive coordinator Kirby Smart (12 documented trips) and former secondary coach Greg Brown (10) leading the pack. New offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin made just one flight — a return trip from New Orleans to Tuscaloosa on Jan. 30.
How did Saban bide his time while airborne? "I take a computer with me and watch film, watch recruits, watch Oklahoma, watch juniors that are coming up next year," he said on December 17, as he prepared for the Sooners in the Sugar Bowl. "Travel doesn't wear on me as long as I get home at a decent hour."
Michael Shaw and Glen Plugge are listed as pilot and co-pilot for most flights; they're also on the official staff directory of the Alabama athletics department. Plugge was paid more than $94,000 in 2013, according to Alabama's financial database.
As one would imagine, operating N1UA isn't cheap. Each flight hour costs an estimated $2,700, according to a spokesman for Gulfstream, which bought the plane's manufacturer in 2001.
In all, Alabama spent $983,721 on football recruiting in 2013, according to the financial report UA filed with the NCAA in January. That total includes use of university airplanes.
Of course other modes of transportation were used for recruiting during this frenzied period. (Indeed, passenger lists vary from stop to stop, showing that some coaches traveled to the destination by commercial air or car; N1UA, however, is the hub of the most important trips.) Saban drew headlines when he took a helicopter to Meridian, Miss., on Dec. 4 to visit eventual Ole Miss signee C.J. Hampton.
Here's an account of some of the busiest days:
-- Dec. 5: Saban hit the Manassas, Va., home of 5-star defensive line commitment Da'Shawn Hand) before going wheels-up to Columbia, S.C. about 400 miles away to meet with 4-star linebacker Christian Miller. (Hand and Miller eventually signed with Alabama)
Dec. 12: First, Saban flew to Hinesville, Ga., to see 5-star linebacker Raekwon McMillan, then 370 miles to Palm Beach to see coveted 4-star receiver Travis Rudolph, the nation's No. 6 player at his position. (McMillan signed with Ohio State; Rudolph, with Florida State.
(A day later, Saban agreed to a contract extension through 2020, paying him an average annual salary of $7 million.)
Things got progressively busier on the recruiting trail in the final weeks. Between Jan. 20-24, the plane took off 15 times. After a weekend of official visits to campus, N1UA went wheels-up 23 times between Jan. 27-31.
-- Jan. 16: The day after the dead period ended, Saban and Brown toured Alabama in a series of short flights from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham (13 minutes), Gadsden (14 minutes), Talladega (10 minutes), Huntsville (23 minutes) and back to Tuscaloosa.
Rashaan Evans received two visits from Alabama coaches on N1UA in the final two months before picking the Tide over Auburn.
-- Jan. 21: The men go west, their longest trip of the two-month period. After heading to Mobile in the morning, Saban and Brown made the four-hour-21-minute flight to Long Beach, Calif. The next day they made a 17-minute flight to Oxnard, less than 10 miles from Ventura where 5-star quarterback Ricky Town lives. Saban and Brown left Oxnard for a 50-minute flight to San Francisco, which is close to eventual signee Dominick Jackson's junior college. They left for the return trip to Tuscaloosa at 11:10 p.m., arriving at 9:43 a.m. the following day. (Town, after committing to the Tide, announced in April he'd attend nearby USC.)
-- Jan. 23: Saban and Brown took a 13-minute over to Shelby County where four-star defensive back commit Ronnie Clark lived, the first of five flights that day to Columbus, Ga., (home of 2015 receiver Mekhi Brown), Auburn (to see five-star linebacker Rashaan Evans) and Montgomery (Clark and Evans signed with Alabama, and Brown committed to Alabama in April.)
-- Jan. 27: After hosting a handful of recruits on campus over the weekend, Saban left on Monday and made four stops in the fertile hunting grounds to the south. The Florida swing included two stops in Jacksonville, one in Lakeland, and another in St. Petersburg. The only 2014 signee from the vicinity of those stops was Plant City, Fla., offensive lineman Montel McBride.
-- Jan. 30: A day after Saban ventured to Miami to visit commit Chad Thomas, Kiffin joined him for one more shot at top receiver Malachi Dupre in New Orleans. (Thomas signed with Miami and Dupre, with LSU, just six days after the Alabama visit.)
The log also shows the now-famous flight to Auburn on Feb. 1 when Alabama coaches attended Evans' grandfather's birthday party. N1UA left Tuscaloosa at 3:53 p.m. with Smart, Lance Thompson, Burton Burns and Bo Davis on board. It returned at 10:23 p.m., after they hit the dance floor — all in a night's work when competing for a coveted linebacker.
N1UA was used for several other purposes in December and January. Flights included Saban's trip to Indianapolis for ESPN College GameDay on Dec. 7 and seven different trips to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl.
There was also a Dec. 23 visit to junior defensive lineman Jeoffrey Pagan's North Carolina home with Saban and his wife, Terry. Pagan declared for the NFL draft after the season. The Sabans also took a weekend vacation following the Sugar Bowl, flying to Coral Creek airport 60 miles south of Bradenton, Fla. Saban's contract allows 25 hours of flight time annually for "personal, non-business travel."
Despite the relative convenience of travel by private jet, the trips weren't always seamless.
"I guess the only tough night I had is when I didn't get home 'til — plane broke down in St. Louis — and I didn't get home [presumably via commercial flight] one night until 2 in the morning," Saban said. The log includes a Dec. 9 flight from Northwest Arkansas to St. Louis landing at 7:16 p.m. The plane didn't leave until the following afternoon and did not include any passengers.
Three days later, N1UA was back on the move at 7:40 a.m., making three flights to Georgia and Florida.
In all, the trips to Auburn were most fruitful as Evans was the only last-minute addition to the 2014 class. A few big fish got away in Dupre, McMillan and Rudolph. Elam, the target visited two days after the Iron Bowl, signed with local favorite Kentucky.
Still, Alabama secured the No. 1 class in the nation, according to every recruiting service. By December, the hay, for the most part, was already in the barn. But many of the trips during this period helped plant seeds for the next crop of recruits, including visits with rising seniors Will Gragg (four-star tight end), T.D. Morton (four-star defensive tackle), and Drew Richmond (four-star offensive tackle).
It never ends for Saban and N1UA, not when their chase for the next All-American is just a flight away.
Use the search tool below to look at the cities visited for each day in the log, or keep scrolling for a detailed breakdown.
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