Title: The Crimson Slight
By Benjamin Adducchio (Fictionalized)
Tuscaloosa, AL – It’s late May, but the sting of December still lingers in Kalen DeBoer’s eyes.
From his office overlooking Bryant-Denny Stadium, the first-year Alabama head coach squints at the horizon, where the roar of 100,000 faithful feels a distant memory. On his desk rests the final College Football Playoff rankings from the 2024 season—Alabama, heartbreakingly, ranked No. 5. Just outside the top four. Just outside redemption.
“I don’t forget,” DeBoer says flatly. “And I don’t forgive either—not when it costs my players their shot.”
In this alternate season gone sideways, Alabama had gone 11-2, with an early loss to Texas and an SEC Championship game nail-biter against Georgia that ended in a controversial fourth-quarter holding call. The Tide had rallied behind a resurgent defense and a young quarterback with ice in his veins, finishing the year with six straight dominant wins. But when the CFP committee released their final picks, Michigan, Washington, Texas, and Georgia made the cut. Alabama was left behind.
And DeBoer—who’d come from Washington, ironically—felt the gut punch more personally than most.
“They said strength of schedule. They said style points. But we knew what it was,” he says, standing now, pacing slowly. “We weren’t Alabama enough for them this year. Not with Saban gone. Not with me new in town.”
Indeed, DeBoer’s transition into the house Saban built was watched under a microscope. Every timeout, every recruiting miss, every sideline glare became headline fodder. Yet under his watch, the Tide forged a new identity—less dictatorial, more dynamic. He let the coordinators breathe, and the players responded.
“We had the juice. We had the locker room. We were peaking at the exact right moment,” says senior linebacker Jaheim Lawson, who declared for the NFL after the season. “And then? Boom. Just like that. They said we weren’t invited.”
DeBoer recalls the night of the announcement. The silence in the room. The disbelief. The fury. “We turned the TVs off,” he says. “There was no point watching something you’re supposed to be part of.”
But the bitterness birthed a vow. Within days, the team launched “Mission Crimson,” an internal mantra etched into offseason workouts, locker room walls, and even the team’s digital playbook. It’s not public. Not hashtagged. Just quietly seething behind every rep, every film session.
“We don’t talk about the playoff snub out loud anymore,” says DeBoer, his voice sharpening. “But it lives with us. It’s stitched into everything we do.”
And when asked whether he watched the actual Playoff games?
DeBoer smirks. “I studied them. Every down. Every busted coverage. Every fake punt. Because I needed to see what beat us. I needed to see what we were denied.”
It’s been six months since that omission, but the fire in Tuscaloosa hasn’t cooled. Spring practices ended with a ferocity not seen since the Saban era. The 2025 schedule looms—with Texas returning to Bryant-Denny in September. That one, DeBoer says, is circled in red ink.
“We don’t need a committee to define us next time,” he says. “We’ll make it undeniable.”
And with that, the new Crimson era rolls on—not forgotten, not forgiven, and certainly not finished.
Let me know if you’d like this restructured as an article or adapted for a different format like a sports podcast monologue.
