I covered four University of Alabama football coaching searches.
A couple of things stick out to me.
First, I remember the great fan base fax campaign to urge the hiring Mike DuBose after Gene Stallings stepped down. AD Bob Bockrath, smothered under immense pressure and a pile of curly paper, appeased fans with the hire.
Second, I remember the first hire that came in the era of social media. I remember those primitive message boards where fans zealously posted about “Pappy’s plane” that headed out to Washington State University to pluck Mike Price from Pullman.
Although not unanimous, both hires seemed to please the majority of the fan base.
The University of Alabama will soon introduce former Washington coach Kalen DeBoer as the coach to replace Nick Saban.
Reaction is … mixed.
Fans would have overwhelmingly applauded a Steve Sarkisian hire or a Dan Lanning hire. We’ll never know if those were truly viable candidates. The early concern about Kalen DeBoer from disapproving Bama fans is that he is a good football coach whose entire college football career has taken place in the Midwest and West.
Alabama fans snickered when Bryan Harsin failed to get out of the starting gate at Auburn. His lack of recruiting prowess at Auburn will go down in history as an illustration of how not to succeed in a conference that demands talent to win.
Harsin was a good coach with a good record … out West. This fuels hesitancy or more from a lot of Tide fans about DeBoer.
But I started off with two stories that illustrate an axiom I often talk about on my show:
We’re often wrong.
The public has a 50/50 shot on every straight-up sports bet and it chooses the wrong side considerably more often than the right one. We think we know a lot more than we actually know.
We’ll know if Kalen DeBoer was the right hire in about 20 months.
Fans understandably question the “fit” of DeBoer at Bama and wonder if he can recruit in the South. DeBoer may be a wonderful offensive mind and a fierce competitor but you can’t win at a consistent playoff level in the SEC without a super share of 4- and 5-stars.
So the question is fair.
Two thoughts.
First, the primary way to recruit 4- and 5-star athletes today is by providing directions to the school’s NIL collective (and not actually driving the recruit to the collective). You don’t have to have a Southern accent to do that. You don’t have to love mom’s cooking and you don’t have to share stories about the times you went gigging as a kid. It helps, but it’s not as important as it once was. It’s about money now.
Second, the footprint for recruiting used to be 250 miles from campus. Today, the footprint is the entire United States. You have to be able to relate to Tua Tagavaiola (Hawaii) and Minkah Fitzpatrick (New Jersey) as well as you relate to Bo Scarbrough (Tuscaloosa). And aside from money, the primary way you relate to these guys is communicating an ability to prepare the athlete for the NFL.
On a scale of 1-10, I’d put this hire at a 7.5 today. Most Alabama fans, however, will be disappointed with anything less than a 10.
There are three things Kalen DeBoer must do as quickly as possible to win early at Alabama:
First, he must put together a competitive staff. He’s late in the cycle and that’s a disadvantage. He has an incredibly talented offensive coordinator that may get a crack at the Washington head coach position. His receivers coach, Jamarcus Shepherd, seems to be a no brainer to make the move with him. Despite my earlier point about Southern ties not being as imoprtant, he needs a couple of guys that know Alabama high schools.
Second, he has to convince Julian Sayin he can be the next great quarterback at Alabama. The current quarterback is Jalen Milroe and DeBoer can craft a very good offense for him next season, but the future is Sayin. He of course must also convince the overwhelming majority of the current roster to stay.
Third, and most importantly, he needs to display a zeal for recruiting that borders on maniacal. He can’t sign another class for a year, but he needs to be completely out front and visible at every high school in the state and he needs to have a social media team that shows him angling for the title of “Most Zealous Recruiter in College Football.” He needs to dismiss any notion that he can win at a high level with inferior talent. That would be fatal.
Alabama AD Greg Byrne will stand up at DeBoer’s introductory press conference and say that DeBoer is cut from a different cloth than the rest. Although we may not know the truth of that statement for the next 20 months, we can get a good inkling in the next 90 days.
Well done.
I concur