Miami Ohio head coach fired vicious shot at Alabama, Kalen DeBoer over kicker

Kalen DeBoer hasn’t even been the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide one season and he is already a villain in the eyes of a few college football individuals. In just one offseason, DeBoer is a coach with one of the sport's biggest spotlights.

One coach shining that light on DeBoer is Miami (Ohio) Redhawks head coach Chuck Martin. He wasn’t a fan of how DeBoer and his staff at Alabama got the Redhawks’ prized kicker Graham Nicholson.

Martin claims that DeBoer and his staff "illegally recruit[ed]" Nicholson. He also claims that it was planned for other parties like the NCAA to let this slide. Martin clarified that other schools were in the process of trying to recruit Nicholson for the upcoming season, but with Alabama, it was illegal.

Miami Ohio head coach fired vicious shot at Alabama, Kalen DeBoer over kicker

In the NIL and player transfer portal era of college football, player movement has never been busier or in a bigger gray area. For Nicholson, transferring to an elite program like Alabama for NFL exposure and potential NIL deals sounds reasonable.

The biggest question is, would Martin have gone after other schools if they had successfully Nicholson? Martin states that other schools have tried to reach out to Nicholson to join their program. There could be legitimate claims that Martin says DeBoer illegally recruited him, but he shares it on camera and not to the NCAA.

The overall consciousness is that Martin and the Redhawks have made national news. Their names are now going to be remembered in college football this season, for better or for worse.

Not many people have heard about Martin and his 10 previous years with the Redhawks. Miami is coming off its best season at 11-3 and a MAC Championship since 2003 when Ben Roethlisberger was the star quarterback. Nicholson would’ve helped the Redhawks climb even higher this upcoming season, including a playoff berth in the new 12-team college football playoff. Instead, Martin is going to feel territorial about his recruited players.

What Graham Nicholson brings to the table at Alabama

It wasn’t long ago that Alabama was disastrous in the kicking game. That bad luck flipped when Will Reichard went from the top kicker in the 2019 recruiting class by 247Sports Composite to becoming the NCAA Division I’s all-time scoring leader.

Alabama found a great replacement with Graham this offseason. Nicholson became the first kicker from a non-Power Five school to win the Lou Graza Award since Tulane’s Cairo Santos in 2012.

This past season, Nicholson was 27-of-28 in field goals and 35-of-37 in extra points for a total of 116 points scored. Nicholson was 9-of-10 in field goals 40 yards or more. He had four games last season where he scored three goals in a game and nine games where he scored two field goals.

Nicholson comes in as an instant contributor to a Tide offense that has a great amount of potential for efficiency and explosiveness. He was solid through his first three seasons with Miami (Ohio), but he gets an even better chance to showcase his reliability with a bigger school.