Tide Coach Curt Cignetti Can't Wait to Show off Alabama's Receiving Corps

Working for Nick Saban is one of the toughest jobs in college football. Trying to keep up with him is even tougher. Nick not only works a killer schedule himself, but demands it of his assistants.

Starting his third year at Alabama, Curt Cignetti is seeing that first hand.  This will be his 25th year in coaching and he comes from a family where his father coached, so this was not surprising to him or something that is too hard to bear.  Not when the work bears this kind of reward.

"All the work we've been doing began to show dividends last year," he told me recently.  "And the future looks brighter. From my own area of coaching, the wide receivers, I think we've got a group who could down as one of the best of all time."

Everybody knows how Julio Jones made the receiving coach's job a little easier, but fans have worried about who will step up on the other side or stand out as the third pass snagger.

"We are fortunate to have a battle going on for those positions," Curt said. "A good battle means we have lots of players we feel comfortable with."

And that is certainly true and he has more coming in all the time.

Right now, Cignetti can boast that he and Alabama stole yet another from Lane Kiffin's "unstealable" state of Tennessee with the commitment of the state’s best receiver in Keiwone Malone from Mitchell Road High School in Memphis.

"We intend to show that bunch (the Tennessee coaches) that we'll still get the ones we want no matter what state they're in," he said.

And going to a lot of different states is what Coach Cignetti knows a lot about.  Currently he is recruiting Northwest Alabama, Memphis, Oklahoma, Missouri, and the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

Speaking of that region, Curt is tying to land one of the state's best receivers, Demarco Cobbs from Central High School in Tulsa, among other great position players from all over.

Now is a great time to be coaching wide receivers at Alabama, according to Cignetti.  He says the corps is ready to step up and make a difference.

With Julio Jones, Marquis Maze, Mike McCoy, Darius Hanks, Earl Alexander, Brandon Gibson, and Chris Jackson and all the new faces coming in, Alabama fans can stop fretting over who can step up with Julio.

According to coach Cignetti, he has a whole corps of men who can and will.