Kalen DeBoer, Alabama extension is absurd and fiscally reckless | Opinion

Kalen DeBoer, Alabama extension is absurd and fiscally reckless | Opinion

Hold on, hold on. What am I missing here?

College sports is allegedly on its last financial leg, the five-year NIL era spending spree on daddy’s debit card crushing everyone’s future. The bill has come due, and it’s — here’s that catch-all word again — unsustainable.

They’re out of answers, and the only thing left is to expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams, and jam that debit card in the ATM one more time while ignoring the dwindling balance.

Unless, of course, you’re the University of Alabama.

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Alabama, ladies and gentlemen, just extended a football coach after two seasons that included missing the CFP, and earning the No. 9-seed before sustaining the worst bowl game loss in the history of the program.

History.

Alabama extended the contract of coach Kalen DeBoer through 2033 — at $12.5 million per season — after his teams lost eight games over his first two seasons.

Alabama just committed $87.5 million to a coach whose team lost to Vanderbilt for the first time nearly half a century, and lost by 21 to Oklahoma (as a 14-point favorite) with a CFP spot on the line.

Alabama just committed to exorbitant buyouts ― if this thing goes sideways, which it very well could — of up to $67.5 million (2027), $56.2 million (2028) and $45 million (2029) for a coach whose team lost by 14 to Florida State (as a 13.5-point favorite) in the 2025 season opener.

The Noles won five games in 2025: East Texas A&M, Kent State, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech and You Know Who.

Alabama just extended the contract by two years and increased the annual salary by $2.25 million, for a coach whose teams lost the two most important games of 2025 — the SEC championship game against Georgia, and the Rose Bowl against Indiana — by a combined 66-10.

To say nothing of losing to Michigan (as a 13.5-point favorite) a year earlier in a bowl game, while the Wolverines may as well have played a linebacker at quarterback.

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"We are pleased to extend Coach DeBoer and are proud to have him leading the Crimson Tide football program," Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said in a statement. "He is an excellent coach and has done a commendable job developing our student-athletes.”

What, $10.25 million annually through 2031 wasn’t enough? Because Michigan and Penn State may or may not have kicked the tires on DeBoer, Alabama doubles down on a coach who not only hasn’t proven anything, but has had a run of embarrassing, unnerving losses.

I get it, following the greatest coach in the history of college football isn’t exactly the easiest lift. But I can think of many coaches — yes, many — who wouldn’t have pulled off the quad box of losing to Vandy, the worst Oklahoma team since the 1990s, an FSU program in shambles, and a Michigan team that couldn’t throw a forward pass.

All as a double-digit favorite.

Let’s call it what it is: fiscally reckless. That or an unthinkable gamble by one of the most respected athletic directors in college sports.

Look, athletic directors are running departments with annual budgets surpassing anything that could’ve been dreamed as recent as 2020, and want to do everything they can to support their coaches and give them every opportunity to win big. It’s the prudent thing to do with such a large and potentially valuable asset.

But to do it mere months after LSU paid $53 million to Brian Kelly to not coach, after Penn State was willing to pay James Franklin $49 million before he took another job, and after Florida paid Billy Napier $21 million? To fire off a contract extension for a coach who is 20-8 in two seasons, knowing that these large buyouts have become financial anvils around the necks of universities?

The same universities whose presidents are — and I know this is going to shock you — the reason college sports is so fiscally dysfunctional in the first place.

It’s hilariously absurd that coaches in the SEC and Big Ten are complaining about paying top-dollar to keep a backup player, or that player will go to the Big 12 and ACC to make more money.

You might want to start with your own fiscally reckless houses first, fellas.

That or suck it up and take the buyout when it eventually goes sideways.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alabama football takes big gamble, with new Kalen DeBoer contract