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Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sport
Tyler Lauletta

Kalen DeBoer Posted First Tweet Ever by an Alabama Football Coach, and Fans Were Giddy

It’s a new era for Alabama football, as longtime coach Nick Saban left the sidelines after 17 seasons with the Crimson Tide.

Taking over the top job in Tuscaloosa, Ala., is Kalen DeBoer, who most recently coached the Washington Huskies to the College Football Playoff national championship game.

DeBoer faces a tall task in filling the shoes of Saban, who won six national titles with the Crimson Tide, but there is already one place where the former Huskies coach has surpassed his predecessor: social media.

On Monday, DeBoer made a post on X, formerly Twitter, shouting out a few members of the Alabama team who had been named student-athletes of the week.

While the post wasn’t all that significant on its own, Saban was famously old school when it came to social media usage, and given that Saban took over the job in 2007 when Twitter was still in its infancy, DeBoer’s tweet is the first to ever come from an active head coach of Crimson Tide football.

The moment was not lost on college football fans and observers.

DeBoer will have to do a lot more than tweet to win the hearts of Alabama fans, who have grown accustomed to championship seasons year after year, but it’s impressive that he’s already creating his own path in at least one, albeit small, facet of the job before a snap has been played this year.

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