While Alabama fans grieve on Paul Finebaum Show, Kalen DeBoer enjoys path to recovery

• Alabama fans grieve on 'Finebaum' after humiliating loss, but Kalen DeBoer enjoys path to recovery. It's simple, really. Make the playoff.
• Kalen DeBoer attains his Louisiana-Monroe moment, but this situation differs from Nick Saban's Year 1 setback.
• After losing to Vanderbilt, Kalen DeBoer fields criticism ranging from his game plan to his fashion.

Kalen DeBoer could be excused for failing to live up to impossible standards. How could anyone be expected to match Nick Saban’s six national championships at Alabama?

Losing to Vanderbilt, though, constitutes a collapse, an inability to clear the SEC’s lowest hurdle, not the highest bar, a failure to win a game in which then-No. 2 Alabama was a 24-point favorite.

Losses like Alabama’s 40-35 Saturday stupefier in Nashville don’t just halt a first-year coach's honeymoon. They threaten the marriage’s long-term health.

“In many ways, this is the most shocking and shattering loss I have ever seen,” Paul Finebaum, the SEC’s chief orator and host of “The Paul Finebaum Show” on the SEC Network, told me on Monday.

When an Alabama coach loses to Vanderbilt for the first time in 40 years, everything is subject to criticism.

Alabama fans, inflamed by the loss, are questioning DeBoer’s every move – from his game plan to his player discipline all the way his wardrobe choices. DeBoer wore a T-shirt for the game. Big deal, right? Well, welcome to the South, where everything Alabama football is a big deal, down to the coach’s game-day threads.

Finebaum has covered Alabama football in various capacities since 1980. He was present the last time Alabama lost to Vanderbilt, in 1984. It’s not just the opponent DeBoer lost to Saturday that left Finebaum gobsmacked, but the timing of it.

Alabama fans resided in DeBoer’s palm just one week ago. After he guided the Tide to a toppling of Georgia, DeBoer could’ve wandered onto any street corner in Tuscaloosa and sold out a rack of his now-infamous T-shirt.

That was then.

And now?

DeBoer wore a polo to his Monday news conference. Call it a step toward peace.

Saban knew the power of his pulpit. He'd work himself into a frenzy at press gatherings, delivering rants or lectures that he wanted to travel back to his team or fans. That’s not DeBoer. He spoke in his usual even-keel, monotone way. He’ll leave the histrionics to others.

“I’m extremely frustrated – we all are – but we’re not going to lose our cool,” DeBoer said.

Alabama fans won’t forget this loss. Even if they wanted to, their rivals won’t let them forget. DeBoer can’t force amnesia with a magic wand, but he can earn forgiveness.

No one expects DeBoer to win six national championships in Year 1. Just make the playoff, and beat someone when you get there.

If that’s too much to ask, he’s in the wrong job.

The alternative to playoff qualification would be Alabama fans waking up every morning – and calling Finebaum’s talk show in the afternoons – faced with the horrifying reality that Vanderbilt prevented Alabama from making the playoff.

“If this school doesn’t get to the playoffs, this is going to be the scarlet letter around his neck,” Finebaum said. “Let’s say Alabama goes 9-3. He’s going to go through the offseason on the rubber chicken circuit and in recruits’ homes having to answer the question, ‘You didn’t make the playoffs because you lost to Vanderbilt?’”

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Kalen DeBoer gets his Louisiana-Monroe moment at Alabama

The all-caps declaration stretched across five columns of newsprint.

STUNNED.

So read the headline in the Opelika-Auburn News the morning after Alabama lost to Louisiana-Monroe in 2007.

Leave it to a newspaper from enemy territory to announce Alabama’s agony in typeface large enough to declare the Titanic had sunk.

Alabama suffered that humbling defeat amid a four-game losing streak at the end of Saban’s first season. That result gains companionship from DeBoer’s majestic flop – ULM also was a 24-point underdog – but the circumstances were much different.

Saban inherited a team that had not qualified for a bowl game in the previous season, and the program had lost some luster in the years since Gene Stallings retired, while a carousel of coaches twirled through Tuscaloosa. Saban’s initial roster – “a hapless team,” as Finebaum described it – paled in comparison to the one DeBoer inherited.

“Saban’s first year, that wasn’t a particularly loaded team, and that team didn’t really play super hard for him all the time,” said Neal McCready, at the time a sports columnist for the Mobile Press-Register. McCready, who now works for Rivals.com, described Alabama's 2007 team as "unsalvageable."

Meanwhile, Saban was on a recruiting heater. Optimism swelled about the program’s direction, regardless of Alabama’s record.

“There was embarrassment of losing to ULM,” McCready said, “… but, if you were following along, you knew that Saban was going to win, probably sooner rather than later."

That didn’t prevent the barbs in the immediate aftermath of losing to ULM.

McCready, in his column for the Press-Register, wrote that Saban showed in defeat he “isn't some omnipotent football god who can reverse the fortunes of a struggling program merely by showing up.”

Finebaum, who also was then a columnist at the Press-Register, opined that the “embarrassing scene” against ULM caused Bear Bryant to roll over in his grave.

Saban compounded the situation days later, when he spoke of the loss in catastrophic terms. While attempting to make a point that change comes in the aftermath of tragedy, Saban drew a link from Alabama losing to ULM to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. He also asserted that an alcoholic must hit rock bottom before he has hope of recovery.

Consider that presser a rock bottom of Saban’s otherwise historic tenure.

Saban cleansed the palate by winning 200 of his next 223 games. All forgiven.

After Alabama football loses to Vanderbilt, a 'Legend' speaks

Finebaum’s four-hour talk show hit the SEC Network’s airwaves a decade ago, but Alabama remains the show’s heartbeat. And the show becomes appointment viewing after an Alabama loss.

Anticipation for Finebaum’s Monday show began bubbling throughout the weekend after Alabama’s unfathomable defeat. Finebaum, for his part, didn’t want to steer the show off the rails.

“I’ve insisted to our crew: Let’s try to keep it normal,” he said.

And, by “Finebaum” standards, most callers stayed within bounds. At least no one confessed to a felony live on air.

Instead, fans of opposing teams phoned to express their glee at Alabama’s demise, while Tide fans called in to vent or receive some tollfree therapy from Finebaum.

Finebaum knows how shows like Monday's usually go. They'll start innocently enough before the callers work themselves into a fever pitch in the show’s final hour.

Sure enough, Monday's show reached a crescendo in Hour 4 when a "Legend" of the show dialed in. Finebaum's regular callers are like supporting actors in his drama, and an Alabama fan known as Legend is among the most colorful and established regulars. Legend had plenty to say about this humiliation. While ranting across more than six minutes of airtime, he described the loss as "pathetic" no fewer than five times.

“Paul, I’m in sports hell, brother. I’m in sports hell,” Legend lamented, while still warming up. “I never thought I would utter these words: Vandy is my daddy. Can you believe that? Vandy is my daddy. Do you hear that, Coach DeBoer?”

“We are Alabama. We don’t lose to Vandy,” the Alabama devotee and bombastic caller concluded. “Understand, Coach DeBoer. Wake the hell up. We don’t lose to Vandy.

"Strike friggin’ 1!”

DeBoer’s officially not in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, or Seattle anymore. He’s at Alabama, and it doesn’t lose to Vandy.

At least, it didn't used to.

DeBoer reached the inflection point of his tenure just five games in. If he recovers and produces national championships, this loss will be shifted into footnote status, like Saban's loss to ULM. Or, it will become the guillotine that persists over his tenure.

Alabama fans won't forget this moment, but they can forgive DeBoer. What must he do? It's simple, really. Make the playoff. Or, just win 200 of his next 223 games. And wearing a shirt with a collar won't hurt.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's national college football columnist. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.

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