AJ McCarron says comments about Alabama's leadership were taken out of context

That’s what comes with, like me and you have talked about in passing, it’s what comes with the position of playing the position of QB at the University of Alabama. And for the rest of your life and however long your career lasts in football, and then after football, people are going to want to hear what you have to say about the university and sometimes that’s going to be taken out of context and blown up to be more of what it actually was intended for.

And that’s the bad side of media. And for the guy that first started it all and wrote the article, that’s his job. The negative attracts people to click on the article and read it more and then it goes from there and now his name is all over the place so it helps sell their product. But it’s tough sitting there when I felt like I’ve been a big supporter of this year’s team, not only this year’s team, Blake Sims. One of my good friends and we talk all the time and I try to help him with everything that I can.

But that’s just the way it goes sometimes that it’s just taken out of context and I wish fans truly knew me, and I know the people that know me and have been around me know what I meant by what I said last night. Now when it comes to the clip you just played about lacking of what I said ‘true leaders;’ which I mis-worded last night and I’ll admit that. What I meant, because I gave an example right after I said that, which was a vocal leader example. So that’s what I should have said is ‘vocal leader.’ And I mentioned last night, they have plenty of leaders on the team, I named numerous ones last night. Ryan Kelly, I knew he was one of them. And I asked with him being out, who was going to be that vocal guy that steps up now. And I asked is that Blake Sims, does he need to step up into that role? That’s not a negative in any way.

There’s two different types of leaders that whenever I’ve been a part of a championship team, we’ve had these two different types of leaders. And like you and me were talking earlier, I don’t know if we ever got that audio clip of Kevin Norwood coming out in the past after this last season and saying what type of leaders we had on last year’s team. We had plenty of guys, and every team does, every championship team I’ve been a part of, has guys where they lead by example. And those guys most of the time aren’t the guys that are comfortable in that role of being the vocal guy for the team. And speaking up whenever somebody, like I said last night … and an example I gave last night also was Texas A&M. We had numerous guys that were vocal leaders on our offense and we had numerous guys who were vocal leaders on defense. Now some of those guys graduated, and that’s why I said I’ve seen great leaders on the defense, I would like to see more of a vocal leader on offense.

I don’t understand how that got taken to be a negative but it obviously did because it’s all over the place today. Can’t go anywhere on the internet without seeing it. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes. And that was my fault last night, wording the way I did. Because I thought I said a vocal leader, which I didn’t, I said ‘true leader.’ But I gave an example of being a vocal leader after, so, I really don’t see what all the fuss was of people on the internet or twitter talking about me bashing the team. I never once, have I ever bashed our team. Especially this year. If anything, and I think Ryan (the show’s host), you could back me up, I’ve been one of the biggest supporters for this year’s team and for Blake Sims. So that’s the way it goes sometimes. Media’s got to sell and that’s just the ugly side of the media. Because I feel bad for the guys who report the right way and do the right things and don’t try to spin everything into a negative and make it all about sales. Because the negative side of the media ruins it for the guys that truly care about good reporting, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.