Colorado officially announced Alabama staffer Sal Sunseri as its new defensive tackles coach Friday morning. Sunseri spent last season as a special assistant to the head coach for the Crimson Tide after serving as the team’s outside linebackers coach from 2019-21. Sunseri was in hs second stint at Alabama after coaching linebackers from for the Tide from 2009-11

Sunseri’s off-the field role last year centered primarily around managing the transfer portal.

“Whether it’s the portal, having people on top of the portal, you almost need a staff of people just like you have a staff of people for recruiting to find out who the best players in high schools are,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said last year when describing Sunseri’s role. “You also have to have people responsible to do evaluations in terms of who’s getting in the portal.

“And also tracking how guys that get in the portal actually do. I think it’s a little bit of a fad right now to think that I get in the portal and all my issues and problems are gonna be solved. But yet it’d be interesting to see how many people really benefit in a positive way from taking advantage of the opportunity to get in the portal, and we’re gonna track those kinds of things and Sal’s gonna be involved in a lot of those things. But he’s gonna be a special assistant to me, aight, to help me in a lot of ways in the changing landscape of college football.”

Sunseri has previous experience coaching the defensive line at Florida (2018), Florida State (2013-14) the Carolina Panthers (2002-08), and Pittsburgh (1985-91)