Alabama has not worn down its new coach. Not yet anyway. We know this because on some level Kalen DeBoer is intent on making an impression before he makes it to the top of the SEC.
"I remember after A-Day (Alabama's spring game), he's in the tunnel as the team comes in," Alabama AD Greg Byrne said. "People are all lined up. He went down the line, took people's phones and did selfies.
I can't do that. I've taken like three selfies in my life." It doesn't stop there.
Kurtiss Riggs practically has flashbacks of an encounter on a giddy Alabama campus in April as the Crimson Tide made their basketball Final Four run. "Kids were going bar to bar and we were at a stop light," said Riggs, a lifelong friend of DeBoer's who was in the car that day. "They saw it was Kalen.
There must have been 150 people around the vehicle really quickly. The light turned green and we were able to go. Kalen was as excited as they were.
He was waving." Riggs attended DeBoer's first Alabama youth camp this summer and estimated the coach "took about 800 individual pictures." Friends and former teammates have made it a point to fly down from DeBoer's native South Dakota to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to see one of their own ascend to college football's most revered throne.
"He wanted to make it a point to show them around the facility," Riggs said. "I don't think they were expecting that either. He found a way to make time.
" Alabama is going to take some getting used to for everyone in DeBoer's orbit. While Riggs .