Just like that, Kalen DeBoer is gone

Four days after coaching in the national title game, DeBoer is leaving Washington for Alabama. It's a reminder that in college football, even the good guys make cutthroat decisions.

Photo courtesy of UW Football.

Dan Lanning leveraged the moment for his current program’s gain, announcing via slickly-produced video that he’s staying at Oregon.

Mike Norvell got paid off the Alabama opening, but stayed at Florida State. Steve Sarkisian will get paid, too, to remain at Texas.

Kalen DeBoer?

The silence said it all, didn’t it?

Four days after playing for a national championship, four days after completing one of the most captivating seasons in program history, the Washington Huskies now must replace the coach who helped lead them to college football’s biggest stage. 

DeBoer is off to Alabama, replacing the legendary Nick Saban and leaving UW to process an all-time gut punch, just when it appeared the Huskies might be ascending toward national relevance.

In the end, DeBoer won 25 games in 25 months at Washington. Also, a Pac-12 championship and a College Football Playoff semifinal and a slew of national Coach of the Year awards. He pulled Michael Penix Jr. from the transfer portal, convinced key players to stick around, retained his entire assistant staff and positioned the Huskies to enter the Big Ten as a program on the rise. 

In so doing, DeBoer also became one of the hottest names in coaching, and an immediate candidate to take over at Alabama upon Saban’s Wednesday retirement.

You will hear that this move isn’t about money, which isn’t entirely true — it just isn’t about DeBoer’s money.

If DeBoer is leaving Washington because his priority is annual contention for the national championship — which it is — then yes, of course it’s about money, or infrastructure, or at least how the university and athletic department allocate resources. Alabama might not be the very best job in college football, post-Saban, but it’s certainly in the top tier. The school has money, access to fertile recruiting territory and an all-in, institutional commitment to winning football games.

Washington might not have paid DeBoer what Alabama could — contract terms haven’t been released yet — but the school was willing to pay him at a national top-10 level, per a source. The two sides had been negotiating a new contract for months. DeBoer said he wanted to wait until the season was over — until Washington had finished chasing a national championship — to get a deal done. Troy Dannen, UW’s new athletic director, expressed confidence the coach would sign. The two sides had largely agreed to a framework on a deal in November, a source indicated. Washington’s final offer to DeBoer, amid Alabama’s pursuit, would have paid the coach north of $9 million per year over seven years. The department also would have committed to increasing UW’s salary pool for assistants; DeBoer’s 10 assistants were paid about $7.5 million this year, which already ranked 11th among public schools in FBS.

But DeBoer’s concerns have always been more holistic. UW is lacking in nutritional support for players, a topic Dannen mentioned to On Montlake in New Orleans, and an area in which the school had committed to upgrades. DeBoer also has expressed a desire for a grass practice field — the Huskies practiced on the grass surface at their outdoor track prior to grass-field games this season — and UW is amenable to addressing that issue, per a source. It wasn’t enough to keep DeBoer, but those enhancements should at least burnish UW’s profile as it searches for his replacement.

The school has made strides in NIL support throughout DeBoer’s tenure, but you could imagine that it pales in comparison to what’s possible at Alabama. And while the biggest — and perhaps only — question-mark on DeBoer’s résumé is whether he can recruit at a national-championship level, it is obviously much easier to do so at Alabama than at Washington.

None of these were reasons for DeBoer to desperately pursue a new job. But they are all reasons why Washington’s coach would leave for Alabama, even to work in the shadow of a legend, even four days after coaching the Huskies in the national championship game.

In hindsight, there were warning signs.

No matter how it concluded, DeBoer ensured this process would not unfold on Washington’s preferred timeline by leaving his previous representation to sign with Creative Artists Agency and super-agent Jimmy Sexton, one of the most powerful — and cutthroat — figures in college football. 

The agent change could have been read one of two ways. Either DeBoer knew he could parlay a big season into a big raise, and figured Sexton would best maximize that leverage. Or he knew a big season would make him a viable candidate for any blueblood jobs that might come open, and figured signing with CAA would best position him to make a run, should one of them suit him. It’s just that most assumed that job would be Michigan, with Jim Harbaugh long rumored to be coveting a return to the NFL. 

Sexton also represents Saban. Don’t strain your eyes reading between the lines.

One UW official told me shortly after DeBoer’s arrival in Seattle that they could not have been more impressed by him, but: “My only concern is that he seems to be a genuinely good person.”

Would that fly in the ruthless world of college football?

Well.

For the record, I believe DeBoer is a genuinely kind and decent person. I believe he cares about his players. I also believe he cared about his players at Fresno State, another school he left after two years. But the same trait that allowed him to pull the Huskies from the depths and lead them to the national title game is also driving him to Tuscaloosa.

Culture, love and player development are all fine and good. But more than anything, DeBoer wants to win.

He did that at Washington so often that Alabama deemed him worthy of succeeding the best to ever do it.

No doubt, it hurts today to be a UW player or staffer or fan. You’re seeing some raw reactions across social media. A couple players — Jabbar Muhammad, Mishael Powell — have already entered the transfer portal. Surely, more will follow. The word “betrayed” has popped into my text inbox more than once. That’s all fair and understandable.

In this sport, even the good guys say one thing and do another.

But it’s worth remembering that this, to some degree, is what Washington signed up for — by merely existing as a major college program, sure, but also by abandoning the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. Ana Mari Cauce made a cutthroat decision on that fateful Friday in August. She believed she was steering UW toward a brighter future, toward more exposure and a greater chance to regularly compete for championships. And to replace DeBoer, Dannen — barring an internal promotion — will hire somebody who believes the same about Washington, relative to his current position.

Michigan played against Alabama in this year’s Rose Bowl, a CFP semifinal. The Wolverines won, in overtime, then blitzed Washington, 34-13, in the title game. The Huskies won 14 consecutive games this season, a conference championship and a Sugar Bowl. They beat Oregon twice, and Texas under the bright lights in New Orleans. They just couldn’t beat Michigan.

Turns out they couldn’t beat Alabama, either.

— Christian Caple, On Montlake