TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Kalen DeBoer will find his favorite local meat-and-three restaurant in time. Right now, Alabama is more concerned with how he orders up the right mix of staff and players to bring his success from Washington to the SEC.
DeBoer isn’t a Southerner, not even close. The Milbank, South Dakota native doesn’t speak with a southern drawl and has no coaching experience anywhere near the Southeast. Outside of the odd recruiting trip and road game, his new home now resides in a completely foreign territory.
When it came down to it, that didn’t matter too much in the decision to make him the 28th head coach in Alabama’s program history and the successor to legendary head coach Nick Saban.
When Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne hired basketball coach Nate Oats from Buffalo in 2019, he joked that the Wisconsin native better keep someone on his staff who knew what sweet tea and grits were.
Byrne still thinks that familiarity with the South is important. However, when it came to finding a new leader for his football program, DeBoer’s 104-12 record as a head coach held far more weight than his knowledge of Southern culture.
“I think it’s an added bonus if you have that, but when you look at the criteria what you’re looking for, if that’s a non-starter, that’s very short-sighted in what you do,” Byrne said. “We just tried to make sure that we talked about it. We had a good conversation about it, and I felt pretty pleased with his ideas and thoughts with how to put the best staff together to give us the best opportunity to have success across the board in what we do.”
DeBoer’s not a Southerner, but he was quick to state that he wasn’t a West Coast guy either when he traveled to California to become the offensive coordinator at Fresno State in 2017.
DeBoer spent two years with the Bulldogs before serving as Indiana’s offensive coordinator in 2019. He then returned to California to become Fresno State’s head coach, leading the Bulldogs to a 12-6 record from 2020-2021. From there, he continued to excel out west, leading Washington to a 25-3 record the past two years, including a 14-1 mark last season that came complete with a Pac-12 title and a trip to the national championship game.
DeBoer had no trouble acclimating to his surroundings in either of those stops, and he has no doubt he’ll be able to adjust fine at Alabama as well.
“I just got to put myself in a spot with the right people around me,” DeBoer said. “... I think there’s an ability to adapt that I feel confident into where I understand what the SEC’s all about.”
DeBoer didn’t go in-depth about how he will build his coaching staff at Alabama. He did admit it will include “a touch of Washington,” but there’s also likely to be a “sweet-tea” assistant in there as well.
“I understand there needs to be some SEC ties,” he said, “some Southeast ties to help bridge the gap of maybe my experiences here.”
There’s a strong possibility DeBoer will bring over Washington offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb with him to Alabama. The Crimson Tide targeted Grubb as its offensive coordinator last offseason, and he has put together two of the nation’s top offenses the past two years.
One Washinton staffer who has already made the trip to Tuscaloosa with DeBoer was general manager Courtney Morgan, who played an instrumental role in building the Huskies’ roster.
“He’s just so tied into everyone in the recruiting world – players, staff members,” DeBoer said of Morgan. “He knows a lot of this roster. There are parents of players on this roster that he’s got their numbers and talking with them right now, trying to probably allude to what we’re trying to accomplish right now and holding people in place and not getting too antsy.”
Morgan should help DeBoer connect with his new players as well. The first-year head coach currently has to scramble to keep his roster together as Alabama players were given a 30-day period to transfer following a head coaching change.
That also affects how DeBoer builds his staff.
“I want to be very thorough,” DeBoer said. “There’s a fine line with that is that as players are being sought after on our own roster, there’s less people to get in front of them. I’m working tirelessly to manage who we have here. I’ve had one-on-ones, group meetings. I’ve done that a bunch already, last night and today. I’ll work on getting a staff together very quickly.”
In the meantime, DeBoer will be busy meeting with his players, trying to build instant connections while selling them on his plan for the future.
“I tried to show them a little bit of my vision, but I also told them that I understand that you can’t buy into my vision until you truly know me,” DeBoer said. “Just give me a chance. Give me a chance to show you the things. … Try to show them through some proof of things that have happened … what this will look like, how great it will be to be out there on the football field because of what we’re doing schematically, cause the people that are going to be around you as you show up in the weight room for that workout, the people that are around you from a coaching-staff standpoint developing you.”
Simply put, a vision centered around success, not just Southern identity
