Late in Saturday night’s loss to Georgia, after cornerback Dijon Lee committed a boneheaded personal foul penalty that ended Alabama’s chances of a comeback, we saw a side of coach Kalen DeBoer that doesn’t often come out in public view.
As Lee returned to the sidelines and tried to avoid a confrontation with his coach, the normally stoic and understated DeBoer let loose, repeatedly yelling words that were easy to lip read — “You just cost us the game!” — until Lee finally stopped and paid attention.
For DeBoer’s first two years following Nick Saban, every loss has felt like a referendum on whether he’s the long-term answer or whether the most insatiable fan base in college football will chase him to another job where the pressure isn’t as all-consuming.
But a funny thing happened after Alabama’s 20-17 loss. Despite an intense game going sideways late, the discourse wasn’t about whether DeBoer has what it takes to succeed at Alabama. As the video clip of his interaction with Lee circulated on social media, the debate instead revolved around whether DeBoer had gone too far by dressing down a player so aggressively in public.
In a strange way, that’s progress. Because for the first time in a tough moment, it did not look like there was a placeholder wearing a black hoodie on the Alabama sideline. After a couple years of speculation about whether DeBoer would be fired or run to place like Michigan because he’s not Saban, it felt definitively and conclusively like DeBoer’s program.
This isn’t a scientific conclusion, and it’s admittedly strange to make it on the heels of a loss. But at some point, the evidence has to matter. And it points to the following:
Alabama’s leadership believes strongly that DeBoer is the right coach.
DeBoer wants to be at Alabama for the long haul.
There is nobody in college football that Alabama could realistically hire who could do the job better.
It’s time for all Alabama fans and, frankly, the college football gossip machine to finally accept it: DeBoer and Alabama are a good match, and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Might as well sit back and try to enjoy the ride.
"I don't think many coaches in the country would want to go behind the great legendary coach he came in behind," Georgia coach Kirby Smart said last week. "That's a tough job, tough expectations, and he's done an incredible job in his own way and in his own rights."
No matter who athletic director Greg Byrne picked to follow Saban in January of 2024, it was going to take awhile for that person to settle into being The Alabama Coach regardless of immediate success.
Saban was just too big of a figure for 17 years for that transition to happen quickly. And he certainly hasn’t made it any easier on his successor by still being everywhere all the time: On TV commercials, on Capitol Hill lobbying for the Protect College Sports Act, on ESPN’s “College GameDay” and all the various shows attached to it.
If you’re a college sports fan, you can’t get away from him. And if you’re DeBoer, you have to deal with all that — plus the fact Saban still has an office on campus, remains a presence in Tuscaloosa and is still the de facto symbol of Alabama football. This is not a quiet retirement away from the spotlight, it has been a roadblock to the psychological transition of closing that book on that era of dominance and resetting expectations for what Alabama football should be going forward.
Everyone knew that was going to be a challenge, and it’s why there’s been so much noise around DeBoer during two seasons that had good moments, but were ordinary in the end.
A year ago, as Alabama was preparing to play Oklahoma in the first round of the College Football Playoff, there was strong speculation in early December that Michigan was prepared to make a big run at DeBoer — a conversation that never really materialized because Alabama won that game and extended its season until New Year’s Day. Even if there was mutual interest, Michigan had to move on.
Even now, one of the juicy bits of gossip you’ll hear around the coaching carousel is that DeBoer would be the top choice at USC if it pulls the plug on Lincoln Riley. The logic behind this rumor is rooted in DeBoer’s prior relationship with USC athletic director Jen Cohen, who hired him at Washington after the 2021 season.
But that theory doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. In April of this year, Alabama extended DeBoer’s contract through the 2032 season at an average annual salary of $12.5 million per season. If he were to leave, it would cost DeBoer $10 million to get out of the contract until Jan. 31, 2027, and $8 million the following year.
That’s a lot of money to give up for a job that isn’t going to pay him more and isn’t going to give him any better chance at winning a national title, especially in the era of playoff expansion where a well-run Alabama program is going to be in the tournament every year unless disaster strikes.
There’s also going to be a timing issue if the USC job opens up. Alabama, currently ranked No. 6, looks like a good bet to go 10-2 at worst. The Tide should once again be playing on Jan. 1 or likely beyond, which would again make the USC job moot if it opens up. With the transfer portal being open from Jan. 4-13, athletic directors can’t really afford to wait.
And this is all by design. Alabama administrators did not give DeBoer a contract extension because he was overwhelmingly successful in his first two seasons. He hasn’t even come close yet to winning a national title. They did it because, for the people who matter, Saban’s successor has been settled. The contract is simply a fire extinguisher.
Byrne is a proponent of stability and a strong believer that buyouts work. Anyone suggesting that Alabama isn’t attached to DeBoer or that he wants to get out of town needs the face the financial reality of the situation. He’s not going anywhere, nor should he.
Alabama fans, who ran off several coaches between Bear Bryant and Saban, might be coming around to that new reality. This is a different era . Even Saban couldn’t recreate today what he built in the 2010s.
At some point in the future, maybe DeBoer proves that he’s not going lead Alabama where it ultimately wants to go. But the data so far suggests that he’s going to have a team that’s in the mix every year, and with a quarterback he’s developed from the beginning in Keelon Russell, Alabama is starting to look like the souped-up, five-star version of what he had at Washington.
Slowly but surely, the product on the field is taking on the personality of the coach. And at the end of that Georgia game, DeBoer showed a side of that personality he often suppresses when the cameras are on. While there were certainly some critics suggesting that he went too far and demeaned Lee, it’s hard to make that case when we saw Saban light up players and assistant coaches many times, using words that you would not bring to the Sunday dinner table.
It’s called coaching. Even in an era where players make a lot of money, it’s still necessary.
“We preach emotional maturity and I really feel strong that across the board we had that with our team and would have never expected that to happen,” DeBoer said. “You’ve got to give yourself a chance. We’ve been pretty good at that the last two years and obviously the moment comes up like we had just now, we didn’t respond.”
Coaching evaluations this time of year are often a little bit like fantasy football. It’s fun to project how somebody with a well-known track record might fit at another program or why they may have an interest in leaving their current job for another one.
Every now and then we do get a massive coaching move like Lane Kiffin going from Ole Miss to LSU last season. But for the most part, the reality is boring.
And Alabama’s reality is that DeBoer is now their guy and everyone better get on board.
In an odd way, Saturday’s loss to Georgia was so well-played by Alabama but with so much more room to grow that DeBoer might have turned that conversation in his favor more than with any of the wins he’s had there.
It finally looked and felt like DeBoer’s program in every way we can measure. Anyone hanging on to the fantasy of something different or appreciably better is chasing a ghost and wasting their time.