The college football world was stunned when Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban retired, but it didn't take long for the program to find his successor in Washington Huskies head coach Kalen DeBoer.
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ESPN's Mark Schlabach and Chris Low reported on Friday afternoon that DeBoer was finalizing a contract to take over at Alabama. The report notes that Washington's athletic director has made an aggressive offer to retain DeBoer by more than doubling his current salary, but that the Huskies head coach is in talks with Alabama to be their next head coach.
DeBoer is coming off of a dream season that fell just short for the Huskies, going 14-1 with a disappointing loss to the Michigan Wolverines in the College Football Playoff National Championship. However, it had been a very strong two seasons for DeBoer in Seattle, going 25-3 as the head coach for the program while securing the last Pac-12 conference title before the program heads to the Big Ten.
Prior to his time at Washington, DeBoer served as the head coach at Fresno State and offensive coordinator at Indiana. Even before that, DeBoer was a highly successful head coach at Sioux Falls, where he secured three NAIA national titles in four seasons. Including his time for the smaller program, DeBoer boasts a 104-12 record as a head coach.
Alabama had been linked to other head coaching candidates, but DeBoer was one of the three candidates named by SI.com's Richard Johnson, with the other two being Florida State head coach Mike Norvell and current Alabama offensive coordinator Tommy Rees. Dan Lanning had also been mentioned as a potential candidate, but he made it clear that he planned to stay at Oregon.
Whoever was going to take over for Saban was going to have massive shoes to fill, and now it falls on DeBoer to try and keep Alabama relevant as a national title contender every single season.
