Kalen DeBoer is, quite simply, totally different from any football coach Alabama has hired in the modern era.

The 49-year-old DeBoer — whose hiring is expected to become official any minute — comes to Tuscaloosa from Washington, where he posted a 25-3 record in two seasons. The Huskies went 14-1 in 2023, winning the Pac-12 championship and the Sugar Bowl before losing to Michigan 31-14 in the College Football Playoff National Championship game.

DeBoer has also been head coach at Fresno State, posting a 12-6 record in 2020 and 2021. He coached on the small-college level at Sioux Falls from 2005-09, going 67-3 with three NAIA national championships and one runner-up finish.

So how does DeBoer’s resume and background compare to the Alabama coaches who came before him? He’s certainly different, but how different? Here’s a handy chart of every Crimson Tide coach hired since Paul “Bear” Bryant in 1958. It shows age at the time they were hired, years as head coach, career record, plus number of conference and national championship won.

Alabama football coaches since 1958

(record is career record at time hired at Alabama)

As you can see, DeBoer has an incredible track record of success. He’s been an extreme winner everywhere he has been, including an astounding 67-3 record with three national championships on the NAIA level at Sioux Falls, his alma mater.

Along with Saban, he’s only the second Alabama coach to have won a national championship prior to being hired in Tuscaloosa. Only Saban, Bryant and Dennis Franchione — also a highly successful small-college coach early in his career — had anywhere near the level of success DeBoer had before taking the Crimson Tide job.

DeBoer will also be the first Alabama coach in more than 100 years who has never worked in the South before coming to Tuscaloosa. Xen C. Scott, hired by the Crimson Tide in 1919 after several years coaching primary in Ohio, is the last Alabama coach with no “Southern experience” before DeBoer.

The other one with no Southern ties will be a name Alabama fans don’t want to hear — Mike Price, who was fired without coaching a game in 2003 for off-field issues. Price came from Washington State (where he also won the Pac-12 title in his final season), and the closest he’d come to coaching in the South was a three-year stint as quarterbacks/wide receivers coach at Missouri from 1978-80.

Scott had a really nice five-year run at Alabama — including the program’s first “signature” win over Penn in 1922 — before illness caused him to step down. He was replaced by Wallace Wade, who had been an assistant at Vanderbilt.

After Wade was Frank Thomas, who was head coach at Chattanooga before Alabama. Then came Harold “Red” Drew — head coach at Ole Miss when hired — and then J.B. “Ears” Whitworth — an Alabama alum and long-time Georgia assistant — before Bryant “came home” in 1958 (he’d also coached at Kentucky and Texas A&M and been an assistant at Vanderbilt).

Ray Perkins, another Alabama alum, took over for Bryant in 1983, and was followed in 1987 by Georgia Tech’s Bill Curry. Then in 1990 came Gene Stallings, who had been an Alabama assistant in the 1960s before becoming head coach at Texas A&M.

Mike DuBose, an Alabama alum and long-time assistant, took over for Stallings in 1997. He was followed in 2001 by Franchione, who had coached mostly in Texas and Kansas, but did serve a two-year stint as an assistant at Tennessee Tech.

After Franchione was (briefly) Price, then Mike Shula, who played at Alabama and grew up in Florida (and also worked for the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins). Shula coached Alabama from 2003-06, making way for Saban — a West Virginia native who had spent five years as head coach at LSU and two years with the Dolphins — before he was hired at Alabama in 2007.

So at first glance, it appears that Kalen DeBoer is a very different kind of hire for Alabama. But after Saban’s success, going outside the box might not be a bad idea.

Creg Stephenson has worked for AL.com since 2010 and has covered college football for a variety of publications since 1994. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter/X at @CregStephenson.