The Guy That Follows The Guy at Alabama: What Kalen DeBoer could learn from Ray Perkins

Bear Bryant ruled Alabama from atop a steel-and-aluminum tower. Every practice, Bryant would climb the spiral stairs to the tower, stand up there alone, and watch his Crimson Tide teams suffer through the Tuscaloosa heat. Alabama’s players never knew when Bryant had his eye on them alone, and so every player worked himself to the edge, every day.

The tower stood as a powerful symbol of Bryant’s dictatorial rule over Alabama. And when Ray Perkins took over for the Bear in 1983, one of his first acts was to send the tower to a Tuscaloosa scrap yard. There it lay on its side on a flatbed truck, weeds growing up all around. Perkins said he wanted to be down on the field among his players, but the message was still clear: This is a new day in Alabama.

Within four years, Perkins was gone too, a testament to just how difficult it is to follow a legend. New Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer knows this all too well; he’ll be walking past statues of both Bryant and Nick Saban (combined national titles delivered to Tuscaloosa: 12) on his way to work. Both men could sympathize with the other’s challenge.

“The greatest honor of my life is following that man,” Perkins, then 42, told Sports Illustrated back in 1983. “But when I took the job they asked me if I was intimidated by Coach Bryant. I said he wouldn’t have wanted me if I was. I’m not replacing him; I’m following him.”

There’s one significant difference between the working environments of Perkins and DeBoer. Bryant died at 69 of a massive heart attack just weeks after coaching his final game and months before Perkins would start. Saban, on the other hand, is 72, a testament to exercise, a better diet and the fact that a carton of Little Debbie snack cakes isn’t as destructive of a vice as a carton of unfiltered Chesterfields.

Saban sat in the front row during DeBoer’s introductory press conference, and DeBoer, who will turn 50 in October, made sure to acknowledge the legend in his midst.

“He’s the best in the business to ever do it,” DeBoer said, adding that Saban has “100% access to everything. I would be a fool if that wasn’t the case, I would be a fool. I’m going to ask him that he shows up and make sure he gives me at least one thing every day. I’m sure he’s going to have 10 … but at least one thing that he sees, that we can get better at.”

In the wake of Saban’s retirement, plenty of commentators spun some variation on the idea that you don’t want to be the guy that follows The Guy. Let the replacement fail, the thinking goes, and then sweep in and rebuild the program without the pressure of keeping up with a legend.

Turns out way back in 1983, Perkins heard that line too, and had no patience for it. “People say it’s better not to follow a legend, but not everybody who follows a legend has to fail,” he said. “The guy who says he’d rather follow the guy who follows the legend is too scared to be there in the first place. He doesn’t deserve this job. It’s the best coaching job in America.”

Also possibly the toughest, then and now. Perkins won eight games in 1983, but the very next year, he went 5-6, which marked the Tide’s first losing season since 1957 — not coincidentally, the year before Bryant arrived. After four years of middling success by Alabama standards — three mid-tier bowl wins, a 2-2 record against Auburn — Perkins decided he’d had enough, and lit out for Tampa Bay and the NFL following the 1986 season.

Historically, it’s taken a while for Alabama coaches following legends to find their footing. After Frank Thomas, who won two national championships, retired in 1946, it took three coaches and 15 years for Bryant to win his first, in 1961. After Bryant retired, Alabama needed three coaches and 10 years for Gene Stallings to win in 1992. And after Stallings stepped aside in 1996, Alabama would go through four coaches and an interim before Saban arrived and delivered his first Alabama title in 2009.

DeBoer won’t get a decade-plus of latitude. Alabama fans — who actually began calling for Stallings’ job when he started 0-3 – will expect results quickly. Alabama has the fifth-best odds to win the national championship, which means that snaring a spot in the new 12-team College Football Playoff ought to be — in Alabama fans’ minds — a mere formality, right?

Coaches following legends have often enjoyed a bit of a honeymoon period thanks to the fact that they play their first couple of seasons with players recruited by the previous guy. It’s when those players filter out of the pipeline that you start to learn how good a recruiter the new guy is … or, at least, that used to be the usual way.

The introduction of the transfer portal has upended that entire dynamic. Alabama already saw several high-profile Saban-era players — including Iron Bowl “Gravedigger” hero Isaiah Bond and star safety Caleb Downs — decamp for perceived greener fields. (Texas and Ohio State, respectively.) But DeBoer moved quickly to shore up the players he had and bring in studs for the future. Rivals currently has Alabama’s 2025 class ranked second only to Ohio State.

“We all have alma maters. We all have places that we have great pride in, and you always want that to be home. We always want to make those people proud of their alma mater and the work that’s been put in to set this program up for success,” DeBoer said this summer at SEC Media Days. “It’s been just an awesome blessing to be a part of this program, to continue to have that expectation on us. The alternative is to be at places where there aren’t expectations.”

That won’t ever be an issue at Alabama. The expectations began the moment DeBoer took the job, and they’ve only increased since then. And everyone knows exactly what’s expected.

As for Bear’s old tower? Perkins’ successor, Bill Curry, had it salvaged from the scrapyard, repainted and re-installed beside the practice field. It’s still there today, a permanent reminder to keep the past in mind … but never try to re-live it.