How Alabama moved from Nick Saban to Kalen DeBoer in 49 hours

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The text messages on Greg Byrne’s cellphone were pouring in, more than 1,000 and counting.

Like most around the college football world, Alabama’s athletic director was still processing what had transpired about 2½ hours earlier that afternoon.

Nick Saban had walked into the team meeting room at the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility and told his players he was retiring. After 17 seasons, 206 wins, nine SEC championships and six national titles at Alabama, one of the greatest coaching runs in American sports history was over.

And Byrne was on the clock.

He understood the enormity of what he was tasked with, the momentous challenge of hiring the replacement for a legend.

“When you’re approaching a historic transition like that, you think about when Coach [Bear] Bryant retired, when John Wooden retired, but it’s also different now because of the transfer portal and NIL,” Byrne said. “But from an impact on a university and the sport itself, it’s as big a change as there has been in a long time.”

Saban spoke with his players for six minutes before leaving the room. Byrne then told the team he would have a new coach in place within 72 hours.

“It ended up being 49. I thought I would beat the 72-hour window but wanted to give myself some padding,” Byrne said.

Saban’s meeting with his players ended at 5:06 p.m. ET on Jan. 10. At 6:06 p.m. ET on Jan. 12, Byrne posted a photo on social media with smoke rising from a chimney — like the Vatican does when there’s a new pope, except this time it was the chimney of a Tuscaloosa barbecue joint — confirming that Washington’s Kalen DeBoer was Saban’s replacement.

Through conversations with the principals involved and other industry sources, ESPN retraced that head-spinning week, which ushered in a new era of Alabama football and, in some ways, reshaped the landscape of the entire sport.

BYRNE’S TWO-DAY WHIRLWIND was actually a year in the making. After the 2022 season, Saban informed Byrne he was nearing the end of his Hall of Fame coaching career.

“Greg, this is getting more and more difficult on me,” Saban told Byrne. “I’m not ready to do it now, but we’re going to have to start evaluating this more on a year-to-year basis.”

While hopeful Saban would keep coaching, Byrne knew deep down that the 72-year-old legend was giving him notice, so he quickly went to work. Byrne had his staff research the college head-coaching hires over the past 25 years from the winningest 25 programs during that span.

“Part of what I was trying to understand is what were the analytics, and our studies showed that 75% of the time you’re basically hiring a Group of 5 head coach, Power 5 coordinator or NFL coordinator,” Byrne said. “That’s not necessarily a negative, but when it comes to the theory that you’re going to hire just whoever you want, the percentages don’t support that.”

Then again, this was Alabama, so the Tide could set their sights higher than most any other school.

By Bama’s standards, the start of last season was a struggle, but Saban was exceedingly proud of how much the team improved. The Tide reeled off 11 straight wins, culminating with a 27-24 victory over Georgia in the SEC title game, snapping the two-time defending national champion Bulldogs’ 29-game winning streak.

“We weren’t a very good team those first few weeks of the season, but it’s a credit to those kids how far they came,” Saban said. “I’m not sure I’ve had a team that improved more over the course of the season.”

But the 27-20 overtime loss to Michigan in the CFP semifinal at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 was a hard one for Saban to digest. Not only was Saban upset about the way his team played, he was especially disheartened about some of the things that happened afterward — in the Rose Bowl locker room and back on campus when he met with some of the players.

“I want to be clear that wasn’t the reason, but some of those events certainly contributed,” Saban said of his decision to retire. “I was really disappointed in the way that the players acted after the game. You gotta win with class. You gotta lose with class. We had our opportunities to win the game and we didn’t do it, and then showing your ass and being frustrated and throwing helmets and doing that stuff … that’s not who we are and what we’ve promoted in our program.”

Once back in Tuscaloosa, as Saban began meeting with players, it became even more apparent to him that his message wasn’t resonating like it once did.

“I thought we could have a hell of a team next year, and then maybe 70 or 80 percent of the players you talk to, all they want to know is two things: What assurances do I have that I’m going to play because they’re thinking about transferring, and how much are you going to pay me?” Saban recounted. “Our program here was always built on how much value can we create for your…