Why Alabama strength coach David Ballou endorsed Kalen DeBoer minutes after Nick Saban retired

David Ballou took his usual seat by the stage in Alabama’s team meeting room, expecting Nick Saban to set the table for the 2024 offseason. Even he wasn’t ready for what came next.

As soon as Saban was wrapping up his retirement announcement, Ballou grabbed his phone and sent a text message to Crimson Tide senior associate athletics director Matt Self .

It included only two words: “ Kalen DeBoer .”

Ballou, Alabama’s director of sports performance since 2020, would later learn that DeBoer was high on the Tide’s list of coaches to replace Saban. But his mind immediately went there due to a previous stint together. Ballou was hired as Alabama’s head strength coach after two years at Indiana. In 2019, DeBoer was the offensive coordinator for the Hoosiers.

Ballou was involved in the hiring process, sitting in on interviews for prospective OCs at IU that offseason. Five years later, he remains impressed by the now-Alabama head coach.

“I remember getting done and him leaving for the day or whatever, and I went up to (Indiana) coach Tom Allen and said, ‘We need that guy. We gotta find a way to get that guy,’” Ballou told BamaOnLine . “The quiet confidence he has about himself, extremely smart, intelligent.”

DeBoer got the job at Indiana after two seasons as the offensive coordinator at Fresno State – the school he left IU for in 2020 to be the head coach. Under his direction in 2019, the Hoosiers finished second in the Big Ten and 15th nationally in passing offense ( 302.4 yards per game ) and third in the conference in total offense ( 432.8 ypg ) over 13 games.

Ballou was the director of athletic performance at Indiana, his alma mater, from 2018-19 after spending one year at his first job at the collegiate level, Notre Dame. Although he only worked with DeBoer for one season, he didn’t hesitate to suggest him for the opening.

“Sometimes when you’re around guys in this business, there’s a presence, and you just know this guy has it . Everybody says it,” Ballou said. “Kalen, I one million percent believe in the guy. It’s why I’m still here. It’s why I decided to stay here. And I think everybody in the building feels the same way.”

Ballou shared similar thoughts on Alabama’s new offensive and defensive coordinators, Nick Sheridan and Kane Wommack , who were also part of Indiana’s staff in 2019. Sheridan spent five seasons in Bloomington, taking over as OC for DeBoer in 2020 before he followed him to Washington in 2022. Wommack was the defensive coordinator of the Hoosiers in 2019 and worked at IU for three seasons before he landed the South Alabama head coaching job.

This offseason was a 5-year reunion for Ballou, DeBoer, Sheridan and Wommack.

“Kane and Nick, you could tell right away,” Ballou said. “They were young coaches when I was at Indiana, and again, just guys that had it . Just the way they handled the room, the way they talked to the players, the relationships they built, intelligent. So when Kalen kind of started talking to me about what his thought process was for staff, I was definitely excited.”

When Saban retired, it was all hands on deck for not just the remaining Alabama coaches but the off-field staff members, as well. Ballou was a big part of that, but he also praised people in the building like Josh Chapman , Denzel Devall , Ha Ha Clinton-Dix , Ashleigh Kimble , Carrigan Johnson , Jeff Allen and others for working to keep the Tide’s roster intact.

As the Alabama strength coach, Ballou is around the players every day. His familiarity with DeBoer, who was hired two days after Saban retired, helped answer some of their questions.

“My role is a little different where you’re with the guys for the good times and the bad times, and you see both of it and you try to help them through it and you wear a lot of hats as the head strength coach,” Ballou said. “But at that point, it was educating them on what I knew about Kalen.

“How good I thought he was, how good of a fit I thought he was and working like crazy – bringing guys into the office, talking to them, reaching out to guys, getting them to come in and talk to them and talking through it.”

It’s been six months since DeBoer took over the Crimson Tide program, and the transition has been smooth ahead of next week’s fall camp in Tuscaloosa. But people like Ballou have helped to make it possible as the page has turned to a new chapter of Alabama football.

“We’ve been hard, hard at work,” Ballou said. “We are all fully aware of what the expectations and the standard is at this place, and nobody in this building wants to let it slip. Everybody is working as hard as they can to keep this thing going the right way.”

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