Kalen DeBoer already dealing with a mini controversy as Alabama's head football coach
New Alabama Crimson Tide football coach Kalen DeBoer is already running into a mini controversy in Tuscaloosa. Over the weekend, rumors started circulating that DeBoer has been accused of tampering with Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita. Fifita was the Pac-12 freshman of the year in 2023 after taking over as Arizona's quarterback a few games into […]
New Alabama Crimson Tide football coach Kalen DeBoer is already running into a mini controversy in Tuscaloosa.
Over the weekend, rumors started circulating that DeBoer has been accused of tampering with Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita.
Fifita was the Pac-12 freshman of the year in 2023 after taking over as Arizona's quarterback a few games into the season.
The rumors seem to stem from some comments that Fifita's dad made to The Athletic last week.
Fifita never entered the NCAA transfer portal after Jedd Fisch left Arizona to take over as the head coach at Washington.
But according to Fifita's dad, the young quarterback heard from some programs through "back channels". And Alabama is one of programs that interested Fifita.
Here are the comments from The Athletic:
From The Athletic: Thanks to some family in the coaching community, Les has relationships with college staffs across the country. Even though Noah never entered the transfer portal, programs reached out through back channels.
“We had three for sure,” Les said. “Alabama is the only one we were really interested in outside of Arizona and staying and obviously Washington. The boys were like, ‘I don’t know if we could go to Washington.’” There was a connection to Alabama. DeBoer, while the head coach at Fresno State, was one of the only coaches to offer Noah a scholarship.
The thought of playing in that offense — and doing so at Alabama — appealed to Les as an alternative in case things didn’t work out at Arizona. But Les recognized it wasn’t his decision to make. He was only there to guide.
While it seems that Fifita's dad is acknowledging that some contact with Alabama took place, he never mentioned DeBoer as a person that reached out to the family. In fact, he never even directly said for sure that he or his son spoke with anyone at Alabama.
On Sunday night, Fifita cleared up the rumors, explaining in a tweet that he never spoke to DeBoer or anyone from DeBoer's "camp".
There's no doubt that tampering is happening in college football. We're seeing players enter the portal one day and have an NIL deal with a new program a day or two later. Those typically aren't deals that come together that quickly.
And as far as back channels go, there's a lot of communication happening between folks associated with programs and players at other programs that head coaches never know anything about.
Ultimately, it's a non-story because Fifita stuck around at Arizona. But I think we all know how the internet can be. Once DeBoer and the word "tampering" is in a viral tweet, it's hard to shut that narrative down.
