Kalen DeBoer’s Fallout From Washington Sends Ripples Across the College Football Landscape
Kalen DeBoer boarded a flight from Seattle and landed in Tuscaloosa not too long after. What ensued was a deep shockwave sent across college football to nearly every facet of the modern day landscape. Kalen DeBoer’s departure didn’t just affect the University of Washington and the University of Alabama. It merely started with them, touching as far south as Tucson and as east as Buffalo.
In today’s era of college football, every late January consists of movement. Movement to get recruiting ramped up, a movement to start scouring the transfer portal for any stragglers that weren’t scooped up, and for the playcallers, movement to try to find a new job. When longtime Alabama head coach Nick Saban retired on January 10th, movement began right away behind the scenes in Tuscaloosa. The search to fill college football’s flagship position wouldn’t be easy. After all, this was the NCAA’s premier organization for as long as Saban manned the team. When news broke that Saban’s heir apparent would be Washington’s Kalen DeBoer, an up and coming head coach who willed his team to runner-up in the national championship, it seemed like the only two teams impacted would the ones on opposite ends of the country. But it goes much deeper than that.
DeBoer’s send off left Washington without a head coach. So naturally, they had to find one. With a head coach search sets off a ticking time bomb that explodes into a hefty outflow in both the transfer portal and the predecessor’s coaching staff either following their boss to their new school or looking for jobs elsewhere. Former offensive coordinator Ryan Grubbs has already followed suit to Bryant-Denny Stadium along with four other members of the staff at Washington. This leads to heavy vacancies in the offices back in Washington, ones that the Huskies must fill.
So, they did. Washington went out and hired fellow Pac-12 head coach Jedd Fisch from Arizona. It felt like the saga had been complete, with the tale coming to a happy ending. Yet, when Fisch was poached to the Pacific Northwest, that left a hole in Tucson, one which Arizona had to hire. Fisch had to bring some of his staff to Washington as well, the same scenario that the Huskies were in the weeks prior. The Huskies also had to clear house of whatever supporting beams were lift in the coaching offices that Fisch didn’t like. The Huskies had to pull coaches from other schools in order to cover their bases.
Thus the cycle begins. It’s a vicious one that rarely leaves a stone unturned. In today’s world of college football, if you think you’re safe, you quite seldom are. The cycle also approaches players nearly the same way it does coaches. With the dawn of the transfer portal era, a coaching change tends to hit nearly every bastion of a program, testing its strength. When a coach leaves from a college football program, every player on that team is immediately given a 30-day window to try to look for other teams regardless of when the portal closed. Fair enough, but then comes the statistical question of outliers. If the portal has closed, that means these programs that are stuck in the cycle are the only teams losing players and not able to pick up players from the portal due to it being shut down for the vast majority of other teams.
Was it an oversight on the part of the NCAA? Blame can be spread, sure. However, the issue remains. With every coaching change, it sends ripple effects throughout the college football world. No bigger effect was seen than the one caused by DeBoer’s departure however. In the immediate moments after news broke that the 49 year-old coach was leaving for the Crimson and White, a slew of notable players entered the portal. That list included supposed starter quarterback Will Rogers, the SEC’s career leader in completions. The move also led four star linebacker Zaydrius Rainey-Sale to decommit from the program. All this might be fine for the new regime, who want to bring in their own cast, but for the players and coaches stuck in the cross-fire, finding a new home is uncertain. And for the program itself, it finds itself between a rock and a hard place trying to fill the empty holes that have been left.
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On the Alabama side Isiah Bond quickly darted for Texas when DeBoer touched down. Buffalo’s head coach left for Tuscaloosa to be DeBoer’s defensive backs coach, a move that found the Bulls’ roster staring down the barrel of a 30-day transfer window. Arizona hired Brent Brennan from San Jose State to be their new head coach, sending the Trojans to the 30-day window.
The fact that the portal window has been closed brings up an interesting notion that these programs now are shielded off from the best players. By this time the cream of the crop in the portal has already committed, leaving the programs that have suddenly been war-torn with table scraps.
More so on the players, schools not even in the cycle begin to be affected when a late transfer slides in, sending presumed starters scratching their heads and unable to transfer. Sure, the spring window exists but it’s a shock that could’ve been avoided without a delayed transfer student coming in. It’s not the end of the world, instead it’s a thorn in the side of nearly everyone. Annoying sure, game-breaking? Quite possibly.
So, now what? DeBoer’s shake up has thrown a wrench into what seemed like a rather calm offseason for college football. Washington’s new monarchy is yet to be tested, with those in power slowly filling up the roster with the holes they needed plugged. Alabama’s coaching staff keeps adding firepower by snatching up any coach from all corners of the nation. Even Jim Harbaugh’s move up to the NFL brings about the question of Wolverine transfers even though the new head coach was an in-house promotion.
This new era of college football is not simple to dissect or even analyze what the NCAA might do. Instead, we’re better off pulling straws or drawing solutions out of a hat. However, one thing is certain, there are specific elements of this entire ordeal that are broken. Yanking teams unintentionally into a statistically unbalanced washing machine-esque cycle is not the way the NCAA intended this to get done. However, the issue still remains that this enigma will continue to shake the college football landscape with every change. Like a snow-filled mountain just waiting for a slip-up to cause an avalanche.
