Alabama fans should be worried to the max with Kalen DeBoer's start

Greg Byrne definitely got his guy, alright. When Nick Saban decided he was done coaching the Alabama Crimson Tide, the university's athletic director opted to go with a complete outside hire in Kalen DeBoer. While he had great success previously at Washington, this just reeked of Bryan Harsin nonsense. It may work out for DeBoer in the end at Tuscaloosa, but his program is being destroyed.

As a fan of the sport itself, I hate to see a major college football brand like Alabama's take as big of a hit as it has in recent days. So many blue-chip prospects are hitting the transfer portal. Guys like Isaiah Bond, Caleb Downs, Kadyn Proctor and Julian Sayin were the type of players Alabama fans were cashing in on to keep this program afloat in the wake of Saban's retirement. All four are leaving now.

Although I would attest that DeBoer is a great head coach, and that he has assembled an excellent coaching staff, at least schematically, this is Alabama, not some rinky-dink program nobody cares about in the Group of Five. You can win games with scheme, but you win championships with recruitment. The Crimson Tide now have nobody with any SEC coaching or recruiting experience.

Alabama was able to pry away Wisconsin's ace recruiter in Colin Hitschler to round out DeBoer's staff, but you do have to wonder if coaches like Ryan Grubb, Kane Wommack and Maurice Linguist will be able to offset that massive talent exodus we are seeing from Tuscaloosa. I venture to guess that Alabama will still be a winning program under DeBoer, but this team is not playing for championships.

Every decision DeBoer is making is giving more and more power to conference rivals like Georgia and Texas heading into next season. Alabama feels like a distant third to them, possibly even worse off.

Kalen DeBoer is getting more wrong than right in his early Alabama days

What we are seeing here is an issue that plagues a place like Washington. Many of us believe that Washington is a college football Blue Blood. I would tend to agree. This is one of the best West Coast programs out there. No wonder why the Big Ten wanted to add them when they did. However, this is a pervasive issue at a place like Washington that should never affect a program like Alabama: OKG's...

OKG stands for Our Kinda Guys. It is a recruiting tactic, or a cop-out, if you will. Washington has a rich football history, but does not recruit on the same level as other blue-bloods. There are blue-chippers in-state, but not a ton. Thus, it is a program where the blue-chip ratio is out of whack. Not a lot of five-stars and a certain type of four-stars play there. In the SEC, that was like Missouri until very recently...

Until DeBoer and his staff establish footing in the recruiting side of things in the southeastern footprint, it will be a grandiose eating of the lunch. It will be a buffet for programs that recruit phenomenally like Georgia, Florida State and Texas, as well as others who do a great job of that as well like Auburn, Oklahoma, LSU and even Ole Miss. You do see the big issue that is killing Alabama now?!

Simply put, the OKG tactic is never going to work out at a football institution like Alabama. It can work at lesser programs across the country, the type of extreme Power Five remote outpost where Mike Leach became a legend. At the end of the day, the better players are going to beat the best schemes, no matter how good the coaching staff is. This is why I would have hired Mike Norvell over DeBoer...

Until I see major changes and commitment to southeastern recruiting, we all should fade Alabama.