By Andrew McCartyShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberThe Penn State Nittany Lions fired head coach James Franklin just six games after he led the team to a College Football Playoff.
As the search for Franklin's replacement began to heat up just a few weeks ago, a surprise candidate started to emerge: Alabama's Kalen DeBoer. Jon Sauber of The Centre Daily Times initially reported DeBoer was a leading candidate for the job in November.
“He’s been one of Penn State’s top targets from the beginning,” Sauber said via Tide 100.9. “I think it was, early on, a little bit pie in the sky, of course, Alabama’s close game with South Carolina, there was a chance it could have picked up there. It didn’t, and then the loss to Oklahoma nudged the door open a little bit."
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Penn State has reportedly been turned down by a number of head coaches including BYU's Kalani Sitake, Louisville's Jeff Brohm and Nebraska's Matt Rhule. The team has also been connected to other coaches like James Madison's Bob Chesney, who is likely leaving for the UCLA job, former New York Giants coach Brian Daboll and interim head coach Terry Smith.
However, as Penn State's search rolls on, DeBoer continues to be linked to Happy Valley. On Wednesday, Dec. 3 in the midst of national signing day, longtime college football announcer Tim Brando suggested DeBoer might be the ace up Penn State's sleeve.
"The longer the @PennStateFball job remains open, the longer Bama fans need to come to grips with the fact that he may get ahead of their posse and take that job! There’s no way in my mind they would have let today go by without a Head Coach, without having contingencies in place," Brando said.
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Brando isn't the first person to suggest DeBoer might not be a culture fit in Tuscaloosa and the SEC, but he's led the Tide to the SEC title game in just his second season.
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