Penn State football’s Nov. 9 opponent next season will have a first-year coach.
Washington’s Kalen Deboer will succeed Nick Saban at Alabama, per multiple reports.
This news comes two days after Saban announced his retirement.
Two nights before that news, DeBoer coached Washington in the national championship game, where it fell to Michigan. He’ll end his time in Seattle with a 25-3 record. Per Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, Alabama will owe Washington roughly $12 million in buyout money. It’s also likely to be paying DeBoer more than $10 million a year.
Alabama’s first game of the post-Saban era is scheduled for Aug. 31 against Western Kentucky.
Washington’s first Big Ten game, both in 2024 and ever, will be Sept. 21 against Northwestern in Seattle.
UW will be one of four programs beginning it’s Big Ten journey in 2024, with UCLA, USC and Oregon— all from the old Pac-12– being the others.
Washington is losing a lot of talent from this year’s national runner-up squad, most notably QB and Heisman runner-up Michael Penix Jr. Players will now have a 30-day window to enter the transfer portal, even though the portal is closed.
DeBoer going to Alabama also means that Penn State coach James Franklin won’t be.
Not that it was ever likely to happen, but minutes after word got out of Saban’s retirement, Franklin was among the coaches on a “potential target list” put out by ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
One odds list had Franklin among the top five favorites to replace Saban.
But now that DeBoer is going to ‘Bama and Washington isn’t the type of job Franklin would have been interested in, thus eliminating the possibility of a “ripple effect,” Penn State will almost surely have its head coach back for the 2024 season.
