Lane Kiffin added insult to injury after Bama took Kentucky's 4-star QB

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Welcome to The Crootletter (sign up to get this in your inbox every morning!). I'm Bud Elliott, SB Nation's National Recruiting Analyst, and in this space I'll be sharing news, rumors and musings on the world of college football recruiting.

Loyal readers know that I have been a big fan of Jacksonville (Fla.) QB Mac Jones for quite a while, and have said that he was better than his rating and offers for the better part of two years. Jones is not the biggest kid at 6'3, 185, but he's been getting bigger and has a very quick release and a decent arm. Combined with good decision making skills and a personality I've seen his teammates sell out for, I couldn't understand why he didn't have better offers for much of the process.

This spring the offers finally came, from Arizona State, Alabama, Louisville, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and others. And he became a four-star prospect across the major recruiting services.

Jones' commitment to Kentucky lasted 50 weeks. On Tuesday evening, he flipped to Alabama after visiting Tuscaloosa.

On the one hand, this sucks for Kentucky. The Wildcats were first on Jones by a mile, and their scouting efforts are going to go unrewarded because there is no prize for second place in recruiting.

But Kentucky coach Darin Henshaw should not have taken to Twitter to subtweet Jones for flipping. It's Alabama vs. Kentucky football. Kentucky should understand this better than anyone because it understandably flips elite players from lesser programs all the time in basketball. And the tweet was not going to bring Jones back.

"In this life, we have to make many choices. Some are very important choices. Some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine to a large extent our happiness or our unhappiness, because we have to live with the consequences of our choices. " -- Coach Darin Henshaw tweet.

Lane Kiffin then retweeted Henshaw because he is a master troll.

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Jones then fired back with a subtweet of his own, since deleted, writing "Nothing but respect to the program yet an old man is acting like a 12-year-old."

The commitment from Jones' perspective is interesting. He certainly fits Alabama's traditional mold of QB under Nick Saban, but the Tide have seemingly been trying to recruit more mobile quarterbacks (Blake Barnett, Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa). If Alabama decides that it wants to keep with its traditional pro-style QB, Jones has an excellent shot at a good career. But if Alabama wants to go with a mobile QB, Jones is not going to win the job. He is not that type of player.

I'm always interested in fit, especially for quarterbacks because teams so rarely rotate them. And I worry that kids fall in love with the most prestigious offer they hold. When Alabama took Phillip Ely in the class of 2011, I thought it was smart for the school because it was getting some depth who probably wouldn't kill the Tide if he was pressed into action. But I thought it was a bad decision by Ely because I did not think he had the physical tools to ever start for Alabama. I was right. Ely never sniffed the starting job and transferred to Toledo.

While I believe Jones is more physically gifted than Ely was, there is an element at play here where he will almost certainly not be the most physically talented QB on Alabama's roster. There is a possibility that Jones' commitment to Alabama is better for the Tide than the QB, but I'm not willing to believe that just yet. And Jones is certainly in a position to evaluate his talent against Tagovailoa, having competed against him at the Elite 11 Finals over the weekend.

Alabama's perspective on this is also interesting. It already has a commitment from Hawaiian phenom Tua Tagovailoa, who has wowed evaluators at every turn and is very mobile and powerful. Why is it taking two quarterbacks in the class? One theory is that while Tagovailoa seems fully committed, it is extremely tough for a player to go 4400 miles away from home for school. If something were to happen with Tagovailoa, Jones would be an excellent backup plan. Another theory is that Alabama is expecting a transfer from another QB or two on its roster and doesn't want to be stuck with just three quarterbacks in the 2017 season.

R.I.P. Kimbo

One of the first people to be discovered and make it big because of YouTube, I loved seeing Kimbo Slice destroy folks. Judging by my social media feeds, recruits loved it, too. His fights were absolutely raw. He'd be throwing hay-makers in a backyard, a boatyard of a public park. He died Monday of heart failure at age 42. This year has had some very famous deaths like Ali, Bowie, Haggard and Prince, but for the kids I follow for this job, Slice seems to have meant just as much.

Let's watch one of his awesome fights where he lets a guy punch him and then says "If that's all you got, it's over." before destroying the opponent's orbital (warning language).

I really enjoyed this by Yahoo's Dan Wetzel on Slice's viral legacy.

It also made me think about how digital video has really changed recruiting. 15 years ago, coaches still had to depend on players sending in DVDs or VCR tapes of their film. Now recruits go viral all the time. Teams have organized systems where they can pull up a player's film on a moment's notice, and then sort if by opponent, position, play type, etc.

I wrote about how it has changed the recruiting industry a little over two years ago and interviewed ESPN's Recruiting Director Tom Luginbill about it.

"It is more difficult [for players to fall through the cracks]," Luginbill said. "I think without a doubt, it's provided more opportunities for more kids. In the past, [coaches] could say, 'Well, we didn't send any foot traffic in [to a school], because in the past, they didn't have any kids. Not worth our time.' Well now, you don't have to send any foot traffic in there. If you can see ahead of time that there's somebody there, you can make your assessment and then decide if you need to go. I do believe that it's enhanced opportunities for a lot of kids, but maybe more than anything, it's taken the opportunity for the college coaches and folks like ourselves to get an early start on building a database, putting together each and every class."

Often times a viral video will lead to offers as it gets passed around by fans and recruiting folks, who will then ask college coaches about a player, like it did with this ridiculous linebacker's film who eventually signed with Oregon.

Quickly

This guide to being recruited by a former Texas A&M player is both funny and informative and well worth a read by parents or recruits.

Our Virginia Tech website interviewed head coach Justin Fuente on a number of topics, including recruiting.

Roy Hatfield: What do you see as the biggest challenge for keeping the blue chip recruits in state?

Justin Fuente:"First and foremost, it’s about our staff evaluating those players and making our own determinations of whether they fit our program. We’re not concerned about how many stars someone else gives a kid, we’re interested in whether they can perform academically and athletically at Virginia Tech and buy into how we work and how we play. I said at my introductory press conference that keeping the top talent in our state would be a top priority and that hasn’t changed."