Open Letter To Kalen DeBoer & Alabama: How DARE You Steal My Alma Mater’s Kicker

To Kalen DeBoer And Whomever Else It May Concern At The University of Alabama, As an alum of Miami University (Ohio) — fun fact, "The U" people: Miami was a university before Florida was a state — the proud home of college football's Cradle of Coaches , I must take immediate issue with how you've begun your tenure at Alabama. I know being the encore act for Nick Saban is a lot of pressure and all. Sparing no expense to make sure you're in national championship contention is a wise move. However, even sans Saban in Tuscaloosa, it's not like you, Kalen, are some coaching or recruiting bum. You just led the Washington Huskies to the College Football Playoff finale and lost to Michigan's NFL-laden, Jim Harbaugh-coached team. Nothing to hang your head about. You're a long way from constructing that NAIA dynasty with a 67-3 record at the University of Sioux Falls. You restored faith in Fresno State's program. You took Washington to new heights. Now? You have any and every imaginable means at your disposal in Tuscaloosa to reel in the biggest-fish recruits. Any fresh-faced 5-star kicker out of high school worth their salt will relish the challenge of kicking at Alabama and the pressure-packed spotlight that comes with that. Hell, any blue-chip prep level prospect in general should have the Crimson Tide on their short list of powerhouse suitors. So why on God's green earth are you and your staff dedicating extra hours, grinding away at MACtion film into the wee hours of the morning? YOU STOLE AWAY Miami University's proudest RedHawk player since Ivan Pace Jr., undrafted rookie starting linebacker for the Minnesota Vikings who only really popped on national radars at the University of Cincinnati. I did the NFL Rookie Watch thing in reference to him. https://twitter.com/MattFitz_gerald/status/1687952229599178752 Love and Honor, Ivan. Love you. Back to the subject of this letter: He may not be a household name, but placekicker and reigning Lou Groza Award winner Graham Nicholson was a critical piece to the Miami RedHawks' run to an 11-3 season and a MAC championship. That's right. We won the MAC! We didn't survive a season-ending injury to Blaine's bro and starting quarterback Brett Gabbert to still claim the conference, only to see our studly special teamer get plucked out of Oxford, Ohio! We were supposed to run it back for Brett's sixth-year super senior season!! Our beloved head coach and eventual Cradle of Coaches big name who'll probably go on to bigger things, Chuck Martin, kept it real when discussing how your sneaky little manipulative minions bombarded Graham with perhaps six figures of f**k-you NIL money to wrest him away from his original college football home. https://twitter.com/JedDeMuesy/status/1826634507828822480 Martin clearly implied there was some shadiness that went on in Bama courting Nicholson. Look at you quaking at the podium, Kalen! https://twitter.com/NextRoundLive/status/1826704029956931826 LIAR! DO YOU DENY IT!? Kickers can be the difference between winning and losing. I get that the margins are slimmer the higher up the ranks you get in college football. At the same time, let's not pretend like Alabama won't take the field in the post-Saban era with a laughable talent advantage over the vast majority of their opponents — even those in their own league, the SEC. It's a little less top-heavy than before thanks to some new additions to the conference like Texas and Oklahoma, yet half the Tide's games are still against relative cupcake opponents. So why? Why Graham Nicholson? You had to poach the nation's best kicker away? It's hard enough for the Miami RedHawks of the world to keep up with the big dawgs in this Wild West NIL era. We can't pay millions of dollars for top-flight recruits. We have to find diamonds in the rough like Nicholson, and sadly, thanks to how active the transfer portal is, even when one of our dudes balls out, they're probably gone to another school in no time. I'm not blaming Nicholson for doing what's in his own best interest. Hopefully he goes on to play in the NFL. I'm blaming you, Kalen DeBoer and Alabama, for your insatiable greediness when you could've just let us have this one. https://twitter.com/MiamiOHFootball/status/1729586399031271800 And how do you, Bama Collective, in this era of mass NIL deregulation, lead the coach whose kicker you stole to publicly call you out for possible recruiting violations? How flagrant can you get? I guess you must know you can get away with it. Like cool, good for our Cradle of Coaches pit-stopping in Oxford. Transience is the nature of the coaching profession. What happened to Nicholson was different. Basically the equivalent of Luke Skywalker answering the call on Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, only to join the Empire in the end. Whatever, man. I'm here and seated for the placekicker battle between Dom Dzioban and Kellan McLaughlin. They just needed to sit and learn behind Graham to see how it's done. Us Miamians will continue to just love our hockey and broomball, rage against The Man that is Big College Football, and cheer like crazy for Nicholson from afar. Like we do our ex-coaches. Because we Miamians are proud of all our former football stars. Well, most of them. Definitely not Ben Roethlisberger... Regards, Matt Fitz, former scribe at The Miami Student PS: Check out our most notable Cradle of Coaches members and their respective roles at Miami. Plenty more where these came from!

• Paul Brown — Quarterback, Class of 1930
• Sid Gilman — Asst. coach (1942-43), Head coach (1944-47)
• Woody Hayes — Head coach (1949-50)
• Bo Schembechler — Head coach (1963-68)
• Sean Payton — Offensive coordinator (1994-95)
• Sean McVay — Wide receiver (2006-08)
• John Harbaugh — Defensive back, Class of 1984

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