When hiring football coaches, colleges search for candidates with strong pedigrees and who are well-matched to their programs. Sometimes, they come up with the perfect fit. For others, it looks like a mail order gone terribly wrong.
Even with a magic wand, there’s no guarantee of getting it right. After all, if Cinderella’s shoe fit so perfectly, then why did it fall off?
For the Alabama Crimson Tide, the hiring of University of Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer comes with so much magic that he might have come to Tuscaloosa riding Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, except — you know — for all the shiny golden wheels and cascading glitter and such.
Will he do well?
Absolutely. Not just in his first year, which is common for new coaches, but in the years that follow.
I confess that my opinion contradicts what I have said about DeBoer in the past. It’s not that I believed he would fail in his previous stops, only that there was insufficient history to conclude he would succeed.
For example, when he took over Fresno State in 2020, I wrote that he had never coached on the West Coast or at the FBS level. Although those were not reasons to ardently conclude he would not be successful, they were reasons to be apprehensive.
What followed was the crisis-shortened 2020 season in which DeBoer’s Bulldogs finished 3-3, and my head nodded with affirmation that my reasons for apprehension had been validated.
Until they weren’t.
In 2021, DeBoer’s Bulldogs were 9-3, with one of those wins being over UCLA, which was ranked 13th in the nation at the time. Okay, that was good, but could he keep it going?
He didn’t have to.
Despite having just one and a half seasons in FBS and a modest 12-6 record, Kalen DeBoer was hired as their new head coach at the University of Washington.
I was bewildered. Why would a Power Five program hire such a newbie when other candidates had more extensive pedigrees? I wrote:
“Kalen DeBoer has decent assistants, and that is a good sign. He also has a loaded QB room
… Michael Penix from Indiana will be the starter. Expect DeBoer to start fast at UW, but I’m not yet sold on subsequent seasons. UW finished 103rd in the nation last year, so that alone will make this year look promising. It’s next season, 2023, that will tell if this is a good hire.”
Indeed, that 2023 season did tell us if it was a good hire. DeBoer took the Huskies to a 14-0, and DeBoer was named national college football Coach of the Year. UW lost in the national championship game to Michigan, but the fact that they got there told us DeBoer was more than ready for FBS challenges.
However, some Alabama fan blogs aren’t convinced. They are skeptical that DeBoer’s meager FBS history is enough to think he can fill the shoes of Hall of Fame head coach Nick Saban.
“I just don’t know about the fit,” Alabama student Jeffrey Hagedorn said. “He’s a West Coast guy. I don’t know how he’s going to adapt down south. It’s a different animal. I’m not the biggest fan. I would’ve liked to see someone with a bigger background with ties to the south.”
Sports Illustrated observed, “In the midst of this coaching transition’s yet-to-be-seen impact, one undeniable truth prevails – the Crimson Tide community remains united in a collective spirit of curiosity. Together, they eagerly await the unfolding narrative that the future holds for DeBoer and his roster.”
Curious.
Not convinced.
The Palm Beach Post cited that DeBoer was a South Dakotan who had never coached farther south than Fresno and questioned his ability to acclimate to “the ruthlessly competitive world of the SEC.”
Lack of experience and unfamiliar terrain were precisely my concerns when he took the Fresno State and Washington jobs. Yet, after nine years as a college head coach, his record is an astounding 104-12, which has come from stints in the Midwest, Southwest, and Northwest. Obviously, geography doesn’t matter to him.
DeBoer will succeed at Alabama because he knows how to win, recruit, and build prospects into players. He is also rock solid in terms of player discipline and conditioning, qualities DeBoer learned as an All-American receiver in college. Teams don’t win 100% of their one-possession games unless players are both disciplined and conditioned.
Although I still don’t think coaches with just four years of FBS experience are good candidates to head coach elite programs like Alabama, I know now that Kalen DeBoer is an outlier. The apprehensions I have had in the past are now gone.
The problem is that a new one surfaced just last month.
On January 24th, DeBoer appeared on the Pat McAfee show on ESPN, asking if he might come up with a southern drawl like LSU coach Brian Kelly tried when he was introduced as the Tigers’ new football coach.
DeBoer laughed and said that was not likely to happen, but McAfee persisted, “A year from now, though, you can’t help it. It’s going to inevitably happen.”
That was a prediction from a renowned sports expert, so while I feel unqualified to disagree completely, I admit to being apprehensive. After all, Saban was in Tuscaloosa for 17 years without evidence of a drawl.
DeBoer will succeed at Alabama this year and in years to come. Fans will eventually applaud him. I offer those predictions without apprehension.
But, when I consider this drawl prediction by McAfee, I find myself back in the Fresno State days and saying of DeBoer, he’s fine this year. It’s next year – we have to wait and see.
