The Unfair Truth: Gene Stallings’ Candid Thoughts on DeBoer’s Daunting Challenge at Alabama

The best advise given by Gene Stallings to Alabama’s first new coach since 2007 is quite straightforward.

“Don’t start off the way I did,” Stallings said in a call with The Athletic last month.

One of just two active coaches to lead Alabama to a national championship is Stallings, 89. However, he was only Alabama’s new coach in 1990 after leaving the Phoenix Cardinals a year earlier.

As an assistant to the late great coach Bear Bryant, the expectation was that the former Texas A&M head coach would help the program regain the success that had evaded it since Bryant’s departure. He lost his first three games as a member of the Tide—to Georgia, Florida, and Southern Miss—by a total of eight points.

“We were playing good, we just wasn’t winning. I’d a whole lot rather be 3-0 and not playing well than 0-3 and play well,” Stallings said. “It makes life a whole lot easier, especially at a place like Alabama where expectation is so high. Coach Bryant set the bar, coach (Nick) Saban added onto it, so it’s going to be a tough place to coach.”

Alabama was indelibly altered by much of Saban’s work. Kalen DeBoer, who succeeds him, will gain from many of those adjustments. However, his string of victories in Tuscaloosa has altered the parameters of what Crimson Tide fans can tolerate.

DeBoer will not gain anything from that at all. Rather, it will make his life a great deal harder.

DeBoer, who will play his first three games against Wisconsin, South Florida, and Western Kentucky, has only lost 12 games in his nine seasons as head coach. At Sioux Falls, South Dakota, he has already won three NAIA national titles.

Two seasons at Fresno State, where he took over a once-proud Washington team that had fallen off a cliff under Jimmy Lake, were responsible for half of those losses. After taking over a 4-8 team, DeBoer quickly built one of the top offenses in college football and led the program to the College Football Playoff in his second year. In total, he won 25 games in two seasons.

Reunited with the frequently injured quarterback Michael Penix Jr., he helped the Huskies win the Pac-12 and College Football Playoffs, and went on to be a finalist for the Heisman Trophy. DeBoer, 49, would still have been a victorious hero even if he had only finished 9-3 in his first two seasons.

If he does that at Alabama, he should be ready to start his third season right on the receiving end of criticism. Anticipations are one thing. Another is what to expect from a place that bills itself as “Titletown.”

“Win the championship. Every year. That’s what you go to Alabama for. If you don’t, it’s a bad year,” Stallings said. “They’re not going to be happy unless you win the championship every year.”

Following a thrilling Iron Bowl victory in 1996, Stallings announced his resignation, saying he “can not complain” because he is doing well enough these days. He won the 1992 national championship, at least ten games four times in seven seasons, and a 34-13 victory in the Sugar Bowl to snap Miami’s 29-game winning streak as the reigning champion.

However, he also dropped three or more games four times.

His tenure is still regarded with fondness in Alabama history, even with those seasons and the devastating NCAA fines he left behind after a two-year probe into the eligibility of standout defensive back Antonio Langham.

It helped that Stallings was a dependable defensive assistant under Bryant for seven seasons during the program’s most successful period.

Following Bryant were Bill Curry and Ray Perkins, who both won considerably more games than they lost but did not satisfy Alabama fans’ desire for a national championship.

DeBoer hasn’t called Stallings yet since taking the job in January, Stallings said.

Stallings claims that DeBoer has not contacted him since taking on the role in January.According to Stallings, there was a small error. “I am going to be an Alabama supporter and wish him success, but if I were him, I would want to reach out to me.”

Before Saban arrived, he was followed by three coaches, none of whom managed to record more than ten victories. Mike Shula was the only one to conclude a season among the top 10.

Only once in the 16 seasons that followed his turbulent 7-6 debut did Saban drop three games in a single season. Six of Alabama’s eighteen national titles were won in a 12-year span, solidifying Nick Saban’s place as the best coach in the history of the game. In their third seasons as head coaches in Tuscaloosa, Saban and Stallings both led Alabama to a national championship.

DeBoer is much more likely to be fired than Stallings to be remembered positively, even with a national championship, if he loses three games in four of the seven seasons like Stallings did.

DeBoer is aware of this. He did not enter the selfless position of succeeding the greatest coach in history with naive faith. He receives hefty compensation as well for assuming the risk. Ninety percent of his eight-year contract, which pays him $87 million, is guaranteed. Stalkers? After he had already brought a national title to Tuscaloosa, he made $556,310 in 1995.

“When I look at the places that I want to be, it’s about winning championships,” DeBoer said in his introductory news conference, with Saban seated a few feet away. “That’s an expectation that I cannot wait and accept as a privilege to try to uphold, winning SEC championships, winning national championships, that’s an expectation and a love and an interest that I’ve always had and a passion that I’ll have and looking forward to carry on with our players, our staff and all of you here.”

For an extended period, though, any discussion with a coach regarding Saban’s replacement was met with the same responses: pity-filled shakes of the head, pursed lips, and wide eyes.

Strangely enough, Saban’s greatness would be somewhat diminished if DeBoer could somehow reach or surpass the standards that Saban set so high. Maybe Saban’s performances were not all that exceptional after all, if his successor can repeat his successes?

Naturally, Saban improved Alabama’s state much from what he inherited and created the opportunity for his successor, DeBoer, to succeed.

For even the most tolerant Alabama supporters, just making the field in a 12-team playoff expansion scenario will not be enough. In the years when he achieves the unimaginable and is not able to win a national title, he will need to make the field and win numerous games in order to buy himself some time.

In decades, no coach has taken over a position with more demanding (unrealistic?) expectations placed on him. All of them are here merely because he took up the challenge.

Is that appropriate?

“It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s fair or not. The expectations are there,” Stallings said. “I’d rather have it that way than go somewhere that people don’t care one way or another.”

(Top photo of Kalen DeBoer: John David Mercer / USA Today)