$87 Million College Football Coach Reportedly Under the Most Pressure

The 2025-2026 college football coaching carousel is one of the busiest in recent memory. 34 FBS head coaching jobs came open between September of 2025 and February of 2026, the most recent being Northern Illinois with Thomas Hammock's departure for the Seattle Seahawks.

The carousel hit the SEC particularly hard. Five different programs fired head coaches between September and November of 2025, and another job opened as a result of a sitting SEC head coach departing for another SEC vacancy.

Six changes in the span of three months should equate to a quieter cycle during the 2026 season, but a handful of SEC fan bases are bubbling with discontent over their current head coaches. One program nearing a tipping point with a head coach is Alabama, which enters its third season under Kalen DeBoer in 2026.

DeBoer won wherever he went prior to his arrival at Alabama. In his first head coaching job, he won three NAIA national championships at Sioux Falls in five seasons. When he returned to head coaching after a decade of working up the FBS coaching ladder as an offensive assistant, his nine-win season in his second year at Fresno State saw him hired away to Washington.

The Huskies compiled a 25-3 record and appeared in a College Football Playoff National Championship in their first two seasons, accomplishments that enticed Alabama to hire DeBoer as Nick Saban's successor.

Kalen DeBoer during the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship game. — Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer looks on against Michigan in the 2024 College Football Playoff national championship | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Alabama hired DeBoer after a fifteen-year period in which it made national championships nearly every other year. With that in mind, 9-4 and 11-4 marks in 2024 and 2025 have not sat well with the Alabama fan base. College football media personality Paul Finebaum called attention to the developing discontent with DeBoer at Alabama on ESPN's "Get Up" on Wednesday.

“Some will say, ‘Hold on a second, didn’t I just watch Alabama win a road game in the CFP at Oklahoma?’ You sure did. But what happened after that has given him heartache and has caused a winter of discontent," Finebaum said.

"That 35-point loss to Indiana has devastated his fan base, and while Indiana was the best team that had the best coach, Alabama fans just don’t care. Remember, he replaced Nick Saban, but he’s lost eight games, and at any other school, he would be acceptable. At Alabama, he better win big this year or else.”

Interestingly, Saban posted a 19-8 mark in his first two seasons at Alabama while DeBoer posted a 20-8 mark in his first two seasons. However, Saban won a BCS national championship in his third season at Alabama, a lofty expectation to hold any college football coach to in his third season.