Alabama Needs To Act Fast and Cut Ties with Stoutland and Pannunzio

The entire college football community has been shook to its very core with the recent allegations stemming from a tell-all jail cell interview between former Miami booster Nevin Shapiro and Yahoo investigative reporter Charles Robinson.

Shapiro told Robinson and the NCAA that he provided improper benefits to 72 football players and other athletes at Miami from 2002 to 2010. And two former Miami assistants that were implicated are now current University of Alabama assistant coaches Jeff Stoutland and Joe Pannunzio.

Shapiro stated that Stoutland was among coaches who brought prospects to his home or luxury suite for recruiting pitches. Also, according to the report, Pannunzio set up a meeting between current Georgia Bulldog tight end Orson Charles and Shapiro while Charles was still in high school so the booster could try to persuade him to attend Miami.

Stoutland was hired by the University of Alabama in January 2011 to coach the offensive linemen. Pannunzio was hired in February of the same year as Director of Football Operations.

According to Robinson, the NCAA began their investigation into the Miami football program in December, so there's a good chance that Coach Saban and the University of Alabama had no prior knowledge of the allegations against both Stoutland and Pannunzio at the time they were hired.

But now, just eight months after Stoutland and Pannunzio joined the Crimson Tide coaching staff, Nick Saban and Alabama AD Mal Moore are under the gun as they juggle the fate of the two coaches in their hands. And the decision should be a relatively easy one.

Fire 'em both, now.

Will it hurt firing the offensive line coach just weeks before the first game of the season? Of course.

Will it affect the team's chemistry? Yes.

Will it be nearly impossible to find a replacement for the two before the season starts? I would think so.

But it would be a lot worse for the program to keep two coaches that have just been implicated in a pay for play fiasco that hasn't been seen since the days of SMU. Why keep two coaches that have a known relationship with a booster that's a mirror image of Sherwood Blount?

To not cut ties with both coaches would be to invite negative publicity into the football program and cause a major distraction within the team.

If Stoutland is on the sideline come September the 10th when Alabama travels to Happy Valley to play Penn State, you can best believe that he'll be the first coach that's shown along with "and that's first year offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland. Stoutland was just recently implicated in an eight-year pay for play scheme where he was accused of bringing recruits to a former Miami booster's million dollar beach house."

And if you think ESPN's bad, just wait till Gary Danielson and Verne Lundquist call a Bama game. Those two will throw the actual football game to the wayside and go into great detail on how Alabama's the most corrupt program in the history of college football, once again remind us that Mark Ingram's father is in prison and when Tim Tebow takes a dump, it comes out already wrapped in cellophane and then little, tiny angels come down from heaven and take it away.

As of this very moment, the University of Alabama has yet to comment on the allegations pointing at Stoutland and Pannunzio. But hopefully, when they do decide to make a public statement, they'll report that both Jeff Stoutland and Joe Pannunzio have resigned from their positions.