For Nick Saban, it was Louisiana-Monroe.
Kalen DeBoer has now faced a surprising loss in his first season at Alabama, as the team fell to Vanderbilt, which significantly impacted the seventh-ranked Crimson Tide’s chances for the playoffs and the Southeastern Conference title, though it may not be a total loss.
No matter how the rest of the season goes, the defeats in 2007 and 2024 would rank among Alabama’s most embarrassing losses, at least in recent times.
DeBoer understands that fans who celebrated six national championships during Saban’s 17 seasons won’t forget this 40-35 loss in Nashville anytime soon, but the players need to move on with South Carolina coming to visit on Saturday.
“You know outside of the building the game gets held on to for not a day, probably not a week, some people hold on to it for the rest of their life,” the first-year Tide coach said. “But for these guys, they don’t get the choice. We, as a staff and them together, have to move on.”
Saban took over a program in a very different situation than DeBoer. However, his first Alabama team during that rebuilding phase lost 21-14 to Louisiana-Monroe, a result that was so difficult for Saban that he mentioned Pearl Harbor and 9/11 the following week.
“Changes in history usually occur after some kind of catastrophic event,” Saban said at the time. “It may be 9/11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, and that was a catastrophic event.”
Interestingly, the last time Alabama lost to Vanderbilt was in 1984 under Ray Perkins, who took over from another legendary coach, Bear Bryant.
