Maurice Smith has been a reserve defensive back for much of his Alabama career, getting plenty of work on special teams but only recently moving to a starting job (as the team's nickelback) in spring practice. Smith is set to graduate this month and had plans to transfer out of the program to play immediately elsewhere.
According to his mother, Samyra Smith, Nick Saban and Alabama are "intentionally" making the process difficult on her son.
She told Seth Emerson of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Smith's first choice was to transfer closer to his home of Sugar Land, Texas, and join Baylor. After that school's scandal, he shifted his attention to Georgia, where former Crimson Tide assistants Kirby Smart and Mel Tucker are now building the Bulldogs' defense as coach and coordinator.
In a transfer appeal filing obtained by the AJC, Smith explained the hostile situation he was facing after requesting a release to transfer from Nick Saban on June 16.
"On Friday, June 17, I arrived at the athletic facility locker room to find my locker cleaned out and all of my personal belongings in the trash (photo attached) underneath trash," Maurice Smith wrote. "These personal items included my family photos, written goals, inspirational and sentimental items memorializing my deceased former friend, roommate and teammate, Altee Tenpenny, and items of personal value from my former teammates."
Alabama has not commented on the letter, but the attitude of his teammates was reportedly backed up with a text message screen shot provided to the paper: "Bro I can't have u at facility. Not for workout, lunch, anything. All in or out policy. Sorry bro."
At the 2016 SEC Media Days in July, Nick Saban said Smith "would be a significant contributor to our team if he decided to stay at Alabama" and cited support for the SEC's inra-conference transfer rule, which requires student-athletes to sit out one year, as the program's stance on the issue.
"We have told him, 'Because we support the SEC rule, it would not be in your best interest to have to sit out. If you want to go some place else [outside the SEC], we'd be glad to help you do that,'" Saban said.
That's where the frustration builds for Smith's mother, who points to the recent transfer of wide receiver Chris Black to Missouri as a graduate student immediately eligible for the Tigers in 2016. She is also angry that Saban thinks he knows what's best for her son when Maurice Smith clearly wants to continue his career at Georgia.
"So what is it, is it really about my son, or is it about Kirby Smart and Nick Saban? I don't know what it is," Samyra Smith said, via the AJC. "You just had a player leave, Chris Black, and he's at an SEC school, Mizzou. So don't tell me it's about a violation of rules, I can read you the rules, I understand them well. It's not a violation of rules or else the SEC would've stopped it, the commissioner would've stopped it. But it's allowed.
"So you make the choice about what's best for the child, if you truly care about the kid. Because knowing he's not happy here, the next-best option for him is going to a program where he's the most comfortable, where he can have a level of success that he believes he can have."
Unfortunately for Smith and his mother, the clock and calendar might be against them if the defensive back is going to play elsewhere in 2016. Georgia began fall camp on Monday and Alabama starts on Thursday.