This is an opinion column.

Good evening, Kalen DeBoer.

Welcome to Oz.

The 72-hour ticking clock never made it to 48 before Alabama found the latest sequel to a legend, plucking a name relatively unfamiliar to casuals to replace the biggest one in the sport’s history.

From Nick Saban to Washington coach Kalen DeBoer in a whirlwind — an eyelash under 35 days shorter than the search that yielded six national titles and the monumental burden that lands on the 49-year-old shoulder trading Seattle for Tuscaloosa.

No pressure.

But yes, pressure.

You don’t take this job if you’re afraid to fail, not with all the examples of those who stumbled in similar roles in the past.

The snap reaction to DeBoer moving into Saban’s office is one that evokes a few notable names.

Ray Perkins is the first. He was charged with filling the shoes left by Paul “Bear” Bryant, an assignment that history doesn’t remember fondly. Coming from the New York Giants, Perkins famously stripped the program and facility of reminders from the Bryant era — one he couldn’t replicate in terms of success.

Perkins went back to the NFL after four seasons a cautionary tale.

Don’t be like him.

No pressure. But yes, a little.

Then there’s Bryan Harsin, a more recent entry. Like DeBoer, his orbit was mostly in the northwest quadrant of the nation. So, when he was hired at Auburn in 2021, establishing relationships in the southeast was a primary responsibility.

It’s hard to recall a bigger failure in every sense of a coaching hire. He went 9-12, was a cultural mismatch like a Martian on Earth, and left the program a mess in a midseason firing.

Definitely don’t be like him.

No pressure. But maybe a little.

And save a little for Greg Byrne, the Alabama athletics director. This is a career-defining hire. Auburn’s Allen Greene who made the Harsin hire, didn’t survive that move.

But the third name that comes to mind here is Byrne’s highest-profile Alabama hire to date. That’s Nate Oats.

Just a few years before stepping off the plane in Tuscaloosa, Oats was a high school teacher and coach in suburban Detroit. DeBoer didn’t take that fast of an expressway to the bigs but the same year Saban won his first Alabama national title, DeBoer was the head coach of Sioux Falls, an NAIA school.

From there, it was to FCS Southern Illinois as the OC, then to Eastern Michigan of the MAC in the same role. His first head coaching job at the FBS level came in 2020, impressing in two seasons at Fresno State to the point Washington called.

Two years, and a 25-3 record later, it was Byrne on the phone.

Oats did two seasons as the University at Buffalo head coach after two years there as an assistant. Since getting that call, Oats led Alabama’s once-sleepy basketball program to two SEC titles in his first four seasons and the No. 1 overall seed in last season’s NCAA tournament. He’d never coached in the south but proved to be a recruiting monster, with the help of a veteran and connected coaching staff.

Be more like Oats, certainly more so than Perkins or Harsin.

Embrace that pressure.

Perhaps it is wiser to shoot for a tier below the peak of Mount Rainier and start with Oats before the essentially impossible notion of replicating a Saban run.

There are a few unmistakable things to like about DeBoer when beginning the career dissection.

He’s a winner.

As a head coach, he’s a staggering 104-12. That includes three NAIA national championships and another title-game appearance in five seasons at Sioux Falls. He went 9-3 in his one full season at Fresno State and 25-3 at Washington.

His teams performed on the big stage.

In fact, he went 5-0 in the last two seasons in games with other coaches connected to this Alabama coaching search. That’s right, DeBoer is 2-0 against Texas’ Steve Sarkisian (including last year’s Sugar Bowl semifinal) and 3-0 against Oregon’s Dan Lanning.

Perhaps the grass really is greener in Eugene today, now that DeBoer skipped east.

His only loss last year was to Michigan in the playoff and Saban would say there’s no shame in that.

But winning is the result of a process Saban made famous for mastering.

Coaching at Alabama requires managing so much more than 85 scholarship players on Saturday afternoons. Among Saban’s biggest accomplishments was protecting the program from booster/alumni interference that’s doomed so many rivals.

Setting that tone will be a mountain to climb in the power vacuum left in Saban’s wake but one critical to success.

The obvious lack of recruiting connections in the SEC footprint is the link rivals use to connect him to Harsin. And Washington hasn’t been fighting for the same 5-stars as Alabama but improved from No. 95 in the 2022 recruiting cycle to No. 26 last year and is No. 36 in 2024, according to the 247Sports composite.

Building the right staff to navigate that transition is huge and it’s not like these moves always go Harsin. Urban Meyer, for example, had never coached in the south when Florida hired him from Utah. He won two national titles in Gainesville.

Saban’s college coaching career never brought him anywhere near the south before LSU hired him from Michigan State in 2000. That didn’t seem to be an issue.

Point is, it can be done.

And there are alternate routes to the top compared to when Meyer and Saban took the SEC by recruiting force. DeBoer proved his skill in the transfer portal, building the team that lost Monday’s national title game around Power-5 imports. That includes Heisman runner-up and Indiana transfer Michael Penix and leading rusher Dillon Johnson from Mississippi State.

Replicating that success in the cutthroat SEC is the real task.

Because DeBoer’s not in Washington anymore.

His yellow brick road led him to Tuscaloosa for a job under the ultimate microscope, replacing the unreplaceable amid a revolutionary shift in the sport.

No pressure.

But maybe a little.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.