TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Kalen DeBoer is beginning to find his footing at Alabama, but the first-year head coach isn’t completely settled in Tuscaloosa just yet.

For starters, his office inside Alabama’s Mal Moore Athletic Facility is under renovation. That’s led to him setting up camp in a makeshift workspace inside the Naylor Stone media room. His desk currently sits roughly 10 yards away from the lectern where he will address reporters this fall.

There are still pieces to be put in place outside of work as well. DeBoer is still living in temporary housing as he waits to move into his new Tuscaloosa home in the next couple of weeks. The head coach is withstanding this hurricane of transition while managing major recruiting weekends and receiving his first taste of Alabama summer weather.

He’s doing it with a smile on his face, as well.

While busy, DeBoer said he’s enjoyed his first five months on the job, making sure to credit the support he’s received along the way. With a little help, things are getting a little more familiar each day.

Last week, DeBoer carved out some time from his busy schedule to meet with Tide Illustrated and discuss the recent transition from Washington to Alabama.

Here are some of the things he discusses during the interview.

“We’re still in the process of everything. I don’t have an office right now. We don’t have a house that we’re into yet. My family will be pretty much from [last Friday morning] until the end of July, we’ll be all over the place and not together until camp starts. We’re still very much trying to get settled in all aspects of life.

“As far as the job and just the work, it’s been great. I think we got our routines down and we’ve continued to refine the process and how we do things. It’s been really good. The staff’s working together, and we’re always finding ways to try and make things better.”

“Not really. We haven’t gone through a summer yet. When you talk about the weather, there’s not a lot of things that just really have shocked me. I think some of it too is that I’ve lived in a lot of different parts of the country. I’ve lived the West Coast, the far Northwest. I’ve lived in California. I’ve lived in Michigan near Detroit. I’ve seen big cities. I’ve seen rural areas, whether it’s rural California or South Dakota. Carbondale, Illinois. I mean, you’re kind of in the middle of all these cities, but you’re kind of an hour and a half away from St. Louis. It’s more rural there, too.

“There really isn’t anything that’s really shocked me. What you do find is there’s just great people everywhere you go. I’ve tied onto those people, and appreciate all the help and everything everyone’s done for me since I’ve been here to make the transition very smooth.”

“Uber! He made the trip. He’s here. You love having your kids have things that they are passionate about. They each have their own areas, and it’s cool to see them really enjoy the things that they love to do. Each of them is completely different. One [Alexis] is very much sports-related, and the other [Avery] loves her horse.”

“I’ve never been on a horse in my life, which is crazy because I did grow up in a rural area on a farm and all that. It’s totally different. I can relate to the softball piece pretty easily.”

“Because of all the things I explained with not living in a place of our own yet. There is definitely not a routine that has developed yet. It’s a lot of on-the-go. It’s always going to be kind of fluid because you have unofficial visits, you have official visits. You go here to meet this person. There’s not a lot of consistency. Once the season starts, there really will be. You know, August and fall camp and what that morning will look like.

“I’m not a coffee drinker, so that’s not really anything. As far as what I eat for breakfast, I’m not usually a big breakfast eater. It’s just ball. And when the family’s around, it’s really just about them and ball. I’m pretty simple.”

“It’s not one in particular. That’s the weakness right there. It’s any and all. Anything that’s related to sweets at all, it’s a problem — especially ice cream. Even that right now isn’t a thing. I haven’t even gotten into the routine of that.

I think once you’ve lived in a place, you’ve got the local areas the you eat at and grab your snacks or even fill up gas at. There’s just no consistency to where I’m at right now. Kind of get back to me at the end of the season or middle of the season. I might have a few of those things figured out.”

“I think the minute you step foot on campus, you’re in that job, and the work is the work. Having done it a couple times where you make these moves, you just know you’re going to dive in and meet a lot of new people. The relationships with the players are going to be of the utmost importance and how you build the staff is going to be a priority. You really don’t have time to think of it any way and process anything. You’re just working. You just start over.

“Every season you start over, but literally all your processes are starting over. We’re talking through an official visit, what that schedule looks like and what you need to make better. A year ago, we can of had that refined when you’re in Year 2 at Washington. Now you start over again and have to figure out what we can improve on.”

“He’s the one that emphasized the whole coaching philosophy piece and like why you do what you do. I think especially in today’s age of coaching, if you don’t have a why, it could just swallow you up. It can be overwhelming and too much. But when you focus on the main thing, that’s important.

“For me, that’s just providing a great environment for our players and for our staff. To be able to enjoy coming into the facility each and every day and love the work that we put in, enjoy being around each other, building our relationships and then impacting the lives of everyone here.

“He helped me see the impact I could have on guys, 10, 15, 20 years from now. That’s what’s really awesome about being a coach, it’s how you’re going to do that and what do you want that to look like. I think the more you do it, the more of those impacts you see coming full circle. When you have players that now have careers and have families of their own, that becomes really special. Having them reach out and want to come to games, man there’s nothing better.”

“The first one is ‘Winners win because that’s what winners do.’ The second one is ‘First, be your best, and then you’ll be first.’ We really focus on ‘Be your best’ in the middle of it. The third one is 'A relentless pursuit of continuous improvement.’”

Winners win because that’s what winners do: “To me, we’re not going to shy away from how important winning is in our program. Really what we’re going to focus on is what winners do. It’s your daily habits and routines. It’s how you treat people and being first-class, taking care of business on the field, off the field. It’s just being a good person, a man of integrity, all that kind of stuff. When you take care of those things and build strong relationships, the winning piece is really a product of it and takes care of itself.

First, be your best, and then you’ll be first: “It’s really about being your best. It can be, of course, related to on the field. But in the classroom, not everyone can be a 4.0, but if you’re someone who’s a 3.0 and you’re capable of that, then get a 3.0. Be your best. That’s the challenge to me for everyone is reaching your potential by being your best.

I’ve been fortunate to be at some very good programs. We said it at Washington as well, ‘First, be your best, and then you’ll be first.’ That could be first in the conference. That could be first in the country. Fresno State was the same way, so was Sioux Falls.

But we can also really apply it to each and every person’s individual goals. That might be being your best and being first on the depth chart or being all-conference and being the best there. I relate it to everything — football-related and non-football-related.

A relentless pursuit of continuous improvement: “Some people talk about getting 1% better each day. That all circles around the relentless pursuit of continuous improvement and having a growth mindset every day. Just focusing on the things you can control and pushing yourself. That’s how we get to where we want to be. That’s how we become our best. That’s how the winning happens.”

“I put them in that order for a reason because when you work it back up and you’re improving every day, you become your best. When you become your best, those are the things that winners do, and they help you win.

Those three things are related, and that’s just the way that I pulled it all together over the years.

It made sense to me because I heard a piece of a couple of those things back when I was a player. I bought into it. I believe in it. And I think that’s the most important thing, it has to be yours. It has to be what you believe in, and that’s what I believe in.

I felt it when I was a player, and I’ve lived it for 25-plus years as a coach. It’s helped me keep teams together, keep the principles simple on what we’re focused on and aligned. Those core values and what we call non-negotiables of being family-oriented, accountability and toughness being those three key pieces to what we want it to look like in our program. Those non-negotiables, they’ve been the same for many, many years."