The Alabama Discount Days are Over

The son of a small gas station service owner in Fairmont, West Virginia, Nicholas Lou Saban Jr. came from humble beginnings before becoming the most powerful entity in modern college football history.

His trajectory was unique and featured a winding road of stops ranging from Kent and Cleveland, Ohio, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Miami, Florida and ultimately Tuscaloosa, Alabama, beneath the shadow of a man with a mountain-sized legacy in Paul “Bear” Bryant.

Long before his legacy was built on the back of national titles and an almost incomprehensible level of recruiting prowess, Saban was seen as a sort of savior figure. Someone who would save a once-proud-turned-wayward football program.

The beginning of his stint in Tuscaloosa resembled that of a monarchy reign. Lots of college football coaching tenures feel the same way. In both Saban and typical monarchial tenures, there are clear beginnings and ends. Triumphs and setbacks. And the reigns of both coaches and kings tend to be bookended by a changing of the guard.

The changing of the guard in Tuscaloosa happened this January when Saban announced his retirement. After a swift and focused hiring process, AD Greg Byrne tabbed Washington HC Kalen DeBoer to be the guy who follows the guy.

Since then, every move by DeBoer has been examined closely. From who he included on his first staff to who came and left via the portal, this has been an offseason of change for everyone involved with the Alabama football program. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.

We’re still months away from when the Tide will take the field for the first time under DeBoer, and while many questions remain, one thing has quickly become apparent: Alabama’s discount days are over. Coaches and recruits are no longer flocking to the Tide in the same way, and they certainly aren’t taking a discount to do so. This is a new world for Alabama and will force them to do things a little differently.

Let’s take a look at how I think Alabama should attempt to do business moving forward.

College football has always been a money game, it’s just out in the open now with the legalization of name, image and likeness.

Programs that work alongside competent collectives will win. The ones who don’t, won’t. Simple as that.

There is a bit more to it than that, though. When I say get your money right, I mainly mean two things: 1) Have enough money to do what you need to do. 2) Spend it wisely. Those things can mean different things for different programs.

In Alabama’s case, they need enough cash to entice blue-chip recruits and top-notch portal players, while also having enough money in the reserve to retain the talent already on their roster. Threading the needle, if you will.

This isn’t an impossible task by any means. I suspect they’ll do a pretty good job at all three as long as the results on the field don’t fall off a cliff. But make no mistake about it: Alabama is now way more reliant on their NIL collective than they were under Saban. With Nick Saban at the helm, there was an understanding amongst players that by taking your talents to Tuscaloosa, you’re giving yourself a great shot at an NFL contract. Guys would take a little less and sacrifice a little more just to get a whiff of that Saban aura. That’s not the case with DeBoer, at least not yet.

DeBoer has been a winner at every stop, and at Washington, he proved he can recruit and develop top talent. Now, he’s got to prove he can do that in the ultra-competitive pressure cooker that is the SEC.

Deceased Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis said it best, “Just win, baby!”

It almost goes without saying, but Kalen DeBoer will have to maintain an extremely high level of winning if he hopes to keep raking in recruits and keeping pace in the league. I don’t think the Alabama faithful should demand a national title out of the gate, but it’s not unreasonable to expect a championship in the first three to four years. That should be a clear indicator as to whether DeBoer is the guy or not.Since 2000, almost every coach who has won a national title has either done so at his new school in under four years or already won a title previously. The only exceptions are Kirby Smart (six years) and Jim Harbaugh (eight years).

If DeBoer doesn’t win big relatively early, the devout DeBoer believer section of the Crimson Tide fanbase will surely point to the leash Kirby had and why it might be worth it to wait for DeBoer to come good. On the other hand…Alabama fans aren’t exactly patient people.

Make no bones about it: DeBoer will have to win and win early if he hopes to sit atop the Houndstooth throne for half as long as his predecessor.

Nick Saban was a lot of things at Alabama. Perhaps the biggest? He was an NFL Draft kingmaker.

Despite not having a single player drafted from his first Crimson Tide team, in the 16 years dynastic years that followed, Saban produced a staggering 123 NFL Draft picks, with all of those players combining to make over $2.26 billion.

DeBoer has a much fuller cupboard than Saban did when he first arrived on campus. He must prove that he can take the baton from Saban and keep sending players from Tuscaloosa to the NFL.

To his credit, I think DeBoer has done a pretty good job of that in his shortish tenure at Washington. The 2024 NFL Draft is the great proof in the pudding for DeBoer, with names like Rome Odunzie, Michael Pennix Jr. and Troy Fautanu all comfortably situated high on draft boards.

The other encouraging sign in this department is that by being at Alabama (and having more money from a bigger NIL collective), DeBoer will undoubtedly have access to the best recruits he’s ever had. He wasn’t recruiting chumps in Seattle by any means, but it wasn’t exclusively four and five-start guys either.

Before taking over at Alabama, DeBoer was known for his elite offensive mind and his ability to max out the players at his disposal. If he keeps up with that trend, he’ll be sending plenty of guys to the NFL stage in no time.

In the days and weeks after Nick Saban announced his retirement, the college football internet was flooded with pseudo-obits, hot takes and many, many questions about how the Crimson Tide move forward and replace someone like Saban.

One of the tidbits that stood out to me came from one of the three college football podcasts that I keep in a consistent rotation. On the task at hand for DeBoer, Cover 3 Podcast host Bud Elliott said it best: “Players don’t come for the logo, they come for the coach.”

It should be abundantly clear that after a dynastic reign for Nick Saban, Bud was right. Players come for coaches, not logos. If Kalen DeBoer is as good as I think he is, that might be a good thing for Alabama.