Days after Huskies’ national title game Kalen DeBoer tells UW he’s leaving for Alabama
Seattle football just lost its second championship coach this week.
Washington coach Kalen DeBoer has told UW officials he is leaving to become the next coach at Alabama, ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Mark Schlabach and Chris Low reported Friday.
It hasn’t been four full days since DeBoer coached the Huskies in the national championship game, UW’s 34-13 loss to Michigan in Houston.
It’s been barely two full days since the Seahawks fired Super Bowl-winning coach Pete Carroll after 14 years leading that NFL franchise.
The Huskies called a team meeting for players Friday afternoon, UW football flagship radio station KJR AM reported.
Since the Huskies’ national title game Monday night, legendary Alabama coach Nick Saban retired after 17 seasons and six national championships there. That put the Crimson Tide unexpectedly in the market for a new coach.
Huskies athletic director Troy Dannen was meeting with DeBoer Friday morning trying to finalize a new contract to stay at Washington, KJR AM reported.
That obviously failed.
Dannen said last week in Houston UW has had a contract offer, the richest in the history of Husky athletics, waiting for the 49-year-old DeBoer since last month.
“We’re in a good place,” Dannen told Adam Brenerman for his NextUp podcast from Houston.
Dannen replaced Jennifer Cohen as UW’s athletic director this fall after Cohen left to be USC’s AD. Cohen hired DeBoer from Fresno State to be the Huskies’ coach before the 2022 season.
Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, who’s first head-coaching job was at Washington a decade ago, was a ‘Bama candidate. Then Texas offered him more money and was reportedly finalizing a new deal Friday to keep him in Austin.
A not-to-be-missed factor is all this: DeBoer recently hired Jimmy Sexton to be his agent. Sexton is Saban’s agent. He is Sarkisian’s agent. He is the agent for 11 of the 13 coaches in Alabama’s Southeastern Conference.
Sexton’s guys — and Sexton, by commission — get paid in this Alabama hiring process.
And money, yet again, wins.
That’s how Friday began for UW. It ended with top, four-star high-school recruits who had committed to DeBoer’s Huskies retracting their commitments to Washington, Huskies All-America wide receiver Rome Odunze and 1,000-yard rusher Dillon Johnson, who could have returned for an extra season, announcing they were entering the NFL draft, plus Huskies defensive backs Jabbar Muhammad and Mishael Powell announcing they are entering the transfer portal.
Friday night it was reported Will Rogers, the quarterback and SEC passing leader DeBoer got to commit to transfer to Washington last month to replace departing sixth-year senior Michael Penix Jr., was entering the transfer portal now that DeBoer is gone from UW.’
College football in 2024.
Another factor in DeBoer leaving: Washington goes from the disintegrated Pac-12 into the Big Ten next season. DeBoer knew at UW he would have had to beat Michigan and fellow national power Ohio State regularly just to get out his new league for a chance at another national-championship game.
Now he goes to the front of the line in the other national college football superpower conference, the SEC, by joining Alabama.
DeBoer has gone 25-3 in his two seasons with Washington. The Huskies were 14-0, Pac-12 champions and on a 21-game winning streak until Michigan dominated them on the line of scrimmage Monday night for the national title.
Dannen said DeBoer could have entered Monday night’s title game with a rich, new deal, but the coach didn’t want to.
“Not interrupting right now, knowing that we’re in a good place,” Dannen told Brenerman. “We’ve talked. We’ve gotten to where we probably could have done something a month ago, had he been motivated to get it done at the time — but keeping the focus where he wanted the focus, and, ‘We’ll get to the contract.’”
Multiple reports say the Huskies were offering DeBoer more than $9 million per season to stay at UW. That would put him among the top-1o highest-paid coaches in college football. He earned $4.2 million in the 2023 season on the deal he signed in November 2022.
Saban of Alabama was the nation’s highest-paid coach this past college season, at $11.4 million per year. The top 25 highest-paid coaches all make at least $6 million per year.
The team meeting room inside Husky Stadium in the fall of 2013 when Sarkisian walked in to confirm to UW players he was bolting to take the job at USC was an ugly, angry scene.
Friday’s Huskies team meeting was likely worse. That 2013 Huskies team didn’t just play in the national title game four days earlier.
Kalen DeBoer’s last Huskies game night
DeBoer was in tears late Monday night in the tunnel of NRG Stadium in Houston immediately after the Huskies lost the national championship game with an uncharacteristically off performance by Penix and DeBoer’s high-flying offense.
He hugged Penix on the quarterback’s way into the locker room, in a lengthy talk and embrace. Then he said this about Penix, fellow departing sixth-year senior Edefuan Ulofoshio and the leaders in UW’s locker room the last two seasons: “They restored the program.”
“They’ve raised the standard again back to where it should be in our program,” DeBoer said Monday night. “And a lot of guys got a chance to see what it’s supposed to look like. Seeing guys like Eddie and Michael do their thing and lead and what the work is that you’ve got to put in, and how hard it is to win a football game each and every week, how hard it, now obviously, is to win a championship.
“But a lot of guys have seen what it takes. And because of what we’ve done this year, we’ll be very attractive for guys to come in, guys who want to win championships come into this program and believe that it can happen again next year.”
It sounded and appeared as if DeBoer would be the coach of that push for another title chance next year, as Washington enters a new era in the Big Ten.
But in big-time sports amid its big-time money, change comes quickly.
And, in this case for UW, hard.
Monday night in Houston after the Huskies’ title-game loss, The News Tribune asked Ulofoshio what was most proud of from his six years at Washington. It started with a 4-8 season in 2018 under Jimmy Lake, three Huskies coaches ago.
“Just resilience,” Ulofoshio said. “I mean, to be honest, when we went 4-8, I completely lost hope. And I didn’t know whether I wanted to like be a part of a rebuilding process.
“I really wouldn’t be here without Coach DeBoer, to be straight and frank with you.
“He gave me something to believe in.”
This story was originally published January 12, 2024 at 12:32 PM.
