Kalen DeBoer’s hiring at Alabama came together in incredibly rapid fashion, he said in a podcast interview Wednesday.
Appearing on “The Triple Option” podcast with Fox Sports’ Rob Stone, Mark Ingram and Urban Meyer, the Crimson Tide head coach was asked about how the decision was reached for him to leave Washington for Tuscaloosa. The Huskies played Michigan in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on Monday, Jan. 8, then Alabama coach Nick Saban announced his retirement two days later.
“We flew back (from Houston to Seattle) on Tuesday after the Monday game, and Wednesday, Coach Saban announces his retirement,” DeBoer said. “Late, late, late Wednesday night, my agent let me know that (Alabama athletics director) Greg Byrne wanted to meet, and it was literally the next day (Byrne was) on a plane up, and so it was that fast. And so, no gauging of interest other than, ‘hey, would you be interested in meeting?’ And that was that Wednesday night. Thursday, interviewed, and then Friday, got offered the job and accepted it.
“Friday night, I was here (in Tuscaloosa) meeting with the team, so it was that fast.”
Byrne leads the fourth-ranked Crimson Tide (3-0) into a showdown with No. 2 Georgia (3-0) on Saturday night at Bryant-Denny Stadium, a clash of teams that have combined for nine of the last 10 SEC championships and five national championships in the last decade. And while the in-state rivalry vs. Auburn will always be his program’s most-important, DeBoer acknowledged the importances every time Alabama meets the Bulldogs.
“I think there’s rivalries for different reasons,” DeBoer said. “… You’ve got your in-state rivalry, and then you have the rivalries because you know that you’re playing for something at a high level. You know that this game — last year and past years — has meant national championship, conference championship, it’s meant a lot in those areas. And so, it’s a rivalry, if you want to call it that way, for those reasons, because there’s something at stake.”
DeBoer’s Washington team played Texas in the Sugar Bowl last year on the same day that Alabama faced Michigan in the Rose Bowl. DeBoer said he was getting set to face the Longhorns in New Orleans when he caught a glimpse of Alabama — and Alabama’s quarterback — on a television screen.
“I was excited to meet him,” DeBoer said. “When we were playing and getting ready to play the Sugar Bowl, and he was obviously on the field in the Rose Bowl, I remember walking by a TV, just going to the locker room, and I was with a couple other coaches, and seeing him make one play, and just passing and seeing it on the TV, one of our coaches goes, ‘Man, if we face him, that’s gonna be a problem.’
“And I told Jalen that, you know, that’s kind of the vision, the visual that I had, from afar, really not having dissected and watching him play.”
DeBoer shares a background with Meyer not only in coaching teams to championships, but also in baseball. DeBoer was a star baseball player at the University of Sioux Falls (he hit .520 with 10 home runs as a senior in 1997), while Meyer was drafted out of Ashtabula (Ohio) High School in 1982 by the Atlanta Braves and spent two seasons playing in the minor leagues.
DeBoer’s daughter, Alexis, is a freshman softball player at Washington. He said he enjoys the “bat and ball sports” nearly as much as he does football.
“There might be some times when you question what is my favorite sport, and I’m saying this jokingly, but I love softball,” DeBoer said. “I love baseball. There’s something about … the hitting techniques and the drill work and just diving into that. And that’s probably the coach coming out in me, but I get to still do that just because I do have a daughter that plays softball.”
Meyer then offered up an interesting little nugget as to how his baseball career ended rather abruptly after the 1983 season.
“You know who cut me? Some guy by the name of Hank Aaron,” Meyer said. “I got a letter saying ‘you’re cut.’
… My dad, bless his soul, said ‘by the way, you might want to save his autograph.’ I said, ‘throw that thing away,’ but he saved it. (Aaron) was player personnel director back then for the Braves.”