Time is of the essence for Alabama’s new head coach Kalen DeBoer as he will be moving just as quickly to build his coaching staff as it took for athletic director Greg Byrne to hire him.
DeBoer, who was introduced as the new head coach on Saturday, is building out the strategy he’ll have to pursue new members of his staff and although it’s early in his process he understands the importance of moving with pace to keep the Crimson Tide’s roster intact.
“Certainly have a strong feeling of what I’d like to do but I don’t want to get too much into that,” DeBoer said. “I think it’ll happen in some capacity quicker here in the next day or so. But I want to be very thorough and the fine line with that is that as players are being sought after on our own roster, there’s less people to get in front of them. So I’m working tirelessly to manage who we have here. Have one-on-one, group meetings, I’ve done a bunch of that already last night and today.”
The 49-year-old did give a little peak behind the curtain sharing that there will be a touch of Washington in his new Alabama staff.
But he also emphasized that adding people with experience in the SEC and the Southeast will be a point of emphasis as well.
“I’ll work on getting a staff in order very quickly and there’ll be a touch of Washington in there,” DeBoer said. “But I’m certainly open to, and kind of hitting on even maybe what Greg (Byrne) was discussing with you when I showed up here, I understand there needs to be some SEC ties, some southeast ties that can help bridge the gap of maybe my experiences here. There are experiences having been West Coast and Indiana and just some of the recruiting. I don’t want to lead you on that there’s not every coach’s phone number in my phone right now I just gotta put myself in a spot with the right people around me.”
Recruiting in the South will be a new challenge for DeBoer who has never quite worked in waters such as these. But what he wanted to make clear was that before taking over the Huskies two seasons ago, he had no experience working on the West Coast either and his results can speak for themselves.
“And I’ll say this, I wasn’t a West Coast guy either,” DeBoer said. “You know, I’ve never been to the West Coast until just a few years ago and coached at two universities out there. So I think there’s an ability there to adapt that I feel confident into where we’re at. I understand what the SEC’s all about and kind of how strong and how much it means here right.”
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
