Nick Saban reacts to Kalen DeBoer 7-year extension, $12.5 million salary at Alabama

Alabama head football coach Kalen DeBoer received a new seven-year extension last week that will pay him an average salary of $12.5 million, placing him among the Top 5 highest-paid coaches in the sport. The extension drew immediate criticism from fans and media pundits alike, including ESPN firebrand Paul Finebaum, who questioned awarding a coach who has lost eight games in his first two seasons.

Also at issue was DeBoer’s new $12.5 million annual salary, which far exceeds the $11.1 million that former Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban earned in 2023, the final season of his legendary 17-year tenure in Tuscaloosa. But, from Saban’s perspective, that’s simply the cost of doing business in today’s transient college football world.

“Look, I think coaching is a competitive field, just like playing is a competitive field, and I think Kalen’s had a lot of opportunities (elsewhere) and if Alabama wanted to keep him, they needed to do what they needed to do to keep him,” Saban said Wednesday morning ahead of participating in the Regions Traditions Pro-Am in Birmingham, via AL.com’s Colin Gay. “I’m happy that he’s the coach. And I think when coaches change (schools) now, how much does your roster change?

“When I retired (in 2024), 26 players (transferred), which was hard for the next coach, whoever it was, to overcome. And I think they’ve done a pretty good job with that transition.”

Last week, Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne defended the decision to hand out significant salary bumps to multiple Crimson Tide head coaches amid public scrutiny. In fact, Byrne suggested the specific raises were the result of extensive research into each sport’s coaching marketplace.

“Absolutely, it is a significant investment by our department, by our university, and it’s something that we spent a lot of time and research on making sure we’re competitive in the marketplace, and at the same time making sure we have the right people in these positions,” Byrne told Next Round Live on April 23. “I know I’ve spoken to President (Peter) Mohler about this and our trustees about this, the importance of stability during the time we’re in right now, and we believe this gives us an opportunity to do that with the men and women that are leading our programs.”

DeBoer is 20-8 overall and 12-4 in SEC play across his first two seasons in Tuscaloosa, with one College Football Playoff appearance. But for an Alabama program that lost three or more games just twice in 17 seasons under Saban, back-to-back four-loss campaigns have some Crimson Tide fans up in arms.

Of course, some of that could be recency bias after Alabama’s 2025 season ended on a hard-to-swallow 38-3 loss to eventual national champion Indiana in last year’s CFP quarterfinals.