Exploring The Unfair Criticism Of Kalen DeBoer's Leadership

I find the Kalen DeBoer conundrum to be one of the most fascinating things in the country. It's this weird thing where everybody is like, these are unfair expectations, nobody could ask him to meet, and then in the same breath they're like, fire Kalen DeBoer, he's completely failed this program. Kalen DeBoer has appeared in a national championship game, you know, more recently than Nick Saban. That was Saban's last year, that was why they hired Kalen DeBoer. In his first year in Tuscaloosa, they were controversially left out of the college football playoff because we do this, you know, people said, oh, we're going to go to 12 teams, there's going to be no more controversy. Wrong. Actually, there's more controversy than ever now when we leave out Alabama, Notre Dame, and all these things. So, okay, they get left out the first year, they miss out narrowly. They followed up last year by playing in the SEC championship and winning a road college football playoff game, which I believe is more college football playoff wins than Curvy Smart in this upgraded format. And then they lost, they got drilled by Indiana, who, oh, I don't know, went on to win the national championship. This all feels a little crazy to me. Like, I don't want to tell Alabama fans to settle for less. I respect that. But I do not understand why Kalen DeBoer is being seen as like a failure. That just feels completely detached from reality here. It's real simple. There's reality, and then there's reality in the South. And I grew up in the SEC. It's a whole nother level of craziness down there when it comes to reality and expectations. I'm a thousand percent with you. Kalen DeBoer and Hot Seat do not belong in any universe of the same conversation. He's won 20 games in two years, which is more than Nick Saban won in his first two years. He's played in an SEC championship game. He's played in a national championship game. Like you said, he took Alabama to the playoff and won a road playoff game last year. He's on the hot seat. No, he's not. First of all, they just gave him a contract extension as well, which we all know means absolutely nothing in college football. But here's a guy who maybe they don't have the same type of talent they had under Nick Saban when the transfer portal didn't exist and NIL didn't exist. There's a reason Nick Saban is sitting on the game day set this morning and not in Tuscaloosa. He didn't want to have to deal with the transfer portal at NIL and having to recruit your own team every year. He went out and got the best recruiting class in the country every single year. Kalen DeBoer can't do that. And the expectations are insane that you expect DeBoer to build the same type of roster or same type of expectations that Saban has. We're talking about two different sports from when Saban was the coach and DeBoer was the coach, yet DeBoer has won more games than Saban in his first two years. So I think that the narrative is insane. But the only thing I can tell you, Kevin, is it's the SEC and it's Tuscaloosa, and they're just from a different planet than everybody else is. And that's why, like, it's there for them this year to have a good season. The schedule is not overly hard compared to what we've seen in the past compared to what we just talked about in Texas. Now, you probably shouldn't lose the Florida State at home last year. This time you get your revenge game. You probably don't want to go lose in Lexington next week. But at the same time, they have an easy start. They have an easy end. You got the gauntlet in between that they're going to have a very tough four-game stretch against Georgia, Tennessee, A&M, and LSU. If you go 0-4, he may not be in town much longer. But you win two of those four games, you're in the college football playoff conversation, which they are every year. So, like, it's a different sport. And that's where I think the fans down there in Tuscaloosa haven't exactly caught on, that this is not the same sport, Nick Saban.