Seemingly everyone can agree there’s a lot riding on Saturday’s Alabama-Tennessee matchup for Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer.
Everything the 49-year-old coach and Alabama does these days is examined under a microscope.
The team has been heavily criticized for its recent three-week stretch in which it knocked off then-No. 2-ranked Georgia before being upset the following week by unranked Vanderbilt and narrowly escaping last week with a two-point win over unranked South Carolina.
And if there’s anyone who can relate to what DeBoer’s going through right now, it’s former Alabama coach Nick Saban, who during a Friday appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show,” shared a little insight into the pressure that comes with being the Crimson Tide HC while also taking a playful jab at polarizing college football analyst Paul Finebaum in the process.
“That’s one of the things that I think allowed me to not lose my mind while I was there,” Saban said. “We got criticized every time we lost a game. I don’t know how many times that I heard Paul Finebaum say this is the beginning of the end. I mean – but it never was, but he said it a lot. You only have to lose one game with Paul.”
Saban’s remarks underscore Finebaum’s reputation for being notoriously tough on head coaches, particularly those at the elite universities like Alabama.
If The Crimson Tide lose to the Vols on Saturday, it’s likely that Finebaum could be leading the charge among those calling for DeBoer’s job for losing two of his first seven games in Tuscaloosa.
“I can’t make any predictions about the future in terms of what people’s patience is going to be, but they don’t have a lot of patience at Alabama,” Saban added. “They have high expectations. You can’t get caught up in that. You’ve got to just focus on what you’ve got to do to make the team play as well as you can and don’t let any of that stuff affect you.”
