The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
UAB Football Signing Day
2/6/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
• 2008 Football Signees BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - February 6, 2008 is Football Signing Day. UABsports.com is the best way to receive the latest updates on the newest UAB Blazers.
As signed national letters of intent are received by the UAB football office, this list will be updated here throughout the day. Biographical information on each signee will also be provided. Check back with www.uabsports.com often during the day to find which players have become UAB Blazers! UAB Head Coach Neil Callaway Quotes 2008 Signing Day Press Conference Transcript February 6, 2008 "First off I want to thank everybody for being here and for what you all do for us. I especially want to thank our coaches and their families. These past few weeks have been a long hard grind. There has been a lot of traveling and work put in by the coaches and a lot of sacrifices by the husbands and fathers being gone but I want to thank them for the effort they've put forth.
• Listen to Press Conference
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Overall I think we have a very good signing class. Of course, time will tell exactly how it plays out but I certainly like what we've done getting these guys in here. We signed 11 junior college guys who I think can give us immediate help at almost every position. That was something going into the signing period we wanted to do because of the fact that we were so young and inexperienced last year. We lacked depth at a lot of spots so that was certainly something we needed to do. Certainly we expect all 11 of those junior college guys to help us this year. We didn't promise them starting spots but we certainly promised them the opportunity to play. If they aren't competing for jobs then I'll be really disappointed because that's certainly the reason why we signed them.
Of the 14 high school guys that we signed, I think I'd expect half of those to help us realistically. I don't think it's fair to call names or point to specific people there because of the pressure you put on them, but I would expect about half of those guys to come in and help us as true freshmen simply because we are still so thin and so young.
I like the balance that we signed in this class. We signed players at every spot except the tight end/H-back spot which we decided we could get by with what we have. We have good balance, which is important to keep because if you don't, two or three years down the road you end up suffering the consequences.
From a defensive line standpoint, we signed two defensive ends and two defensive tackles. The two junior college guys, Anthony Barnes and David Decordova, I'd certainly expect them to come in and help us as soon as they could. The linebacker spot was by far the biggest need we needed to address going into this signing period. We signed seven, two junior college guys, Kyle Roget, who is already here in school and has done a good job to this point in offseason workouts, and Dominique Roulach, a young man from
Safeties, again we signed two, Chris Assily, a junior college kid out of
Offensive line we signed four, three junior college guys, Ryan Roget and Daniel Seahorn are here in school right now and Jared Koechner who will be coming in the fall and those are all guys that we expect to help and contribute.
Someone I'm probably as excited about as anybody is Aaron Johns. We actually signed him last year and there were complications getting him in school. To his credit, he took some courses and just got through them and should be eligible to enroll this summer. He is one that I'm really excited about. I like our young running backs on this football team but I thought we needed an older guy and I think he's going to provide some of that seniority for us. Aaron only has one year of eligibility left. That's kind of two fold, I wanted to stick with Aaron because of his commitment to us and I felt like he would pay dividends for us because of the experience he had playing at the University of Alabama before going to Copiah-Lincoln Junior College and then also being mature and as old that he is I think that will really help us too.
Two junior college receivers are Rodell Carter and Mark Ferrell. They are big strong physical guys who run pretty well. By far their biggest assets are their size and being physical.
At quarterback, the only young man we signed is David Isabelle and we're excited about him and what he brings to the table. He's a very athletic guy who also has a good arm and is a good passer and I think he'll do a lot of good things for us here at UAB before he leaves."
