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Kalen DeBoer hasn’t even been the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide for one season, and already some people don’t like him. In just one offseason, DeBoer is under one of the sport’s biggest spotlights.
One coach shining that light on DeBoer is Miami (Ohio) Redhawks head coach Chuck Martin. He wasn’t a fan of how DeBoer and his staff at Alabama got the Redhawks’ prized kicker Graham Nicholson.
Miami (OH) head coach Chuck Martin on former kicker Graham Nicholson transferring to Alabama:
“Alabama stole our kicker. They illegally recruited our kicker and stole him from us. That’s a fact.” 😳
(via @JedDeMuesy) https://t.co/tfFF6IJGAa pic.twitter.com/llbZKG8sHv
— On3 (@On3sports) August 22, 2024
Martin claims that DeBoer and his staff “illegally recruit[ed]” Nicholson. He also suggests that other parties, like the NCAA, let this slide on purpose.
In the NIL and player transfer portal era of college football, player movement has never been busier or in a bigger gray area. For Nicholson, transferring to an elite program like Alabama for NFL exposure and potential NIL deals sounds reasonable.
The biggest question is, would Martin have gone after other schools if they had successfully recruited Nicholson? Martin states that other schools have tried to reach out to Nicholson to join their program.
There could be legitimate claims that Martin says DeBoer illegally recruited him, but he shares it on camera and not to the NCAA. The overall consciousness is that Martin and the Redhawks have made national news.
Not many people have heard about Martin and his 10 previous years with the Redhawks. Miami is coming off its best season at 11-3 and a MAC Championship since 2003 when Ben Roethlisberger was the star quarterback.
What Graham Nicholson brings to Alabama is significant. It wasn’t long ago that Alabama was disastrous in the kicking game.
That bad luck flipped when Will Reichard went from the top kicker in the 2019 recruiting class by 247Sports Composite to becoming the NCAA Division I’s all-time scoring leader. Alabama found a great replacement with Graham this offseason.
Nicholson became the first kicker from a non-Power Five school to win the Lou Groza Award since Tulane’s Cairo Santos in 2012. This past season, Nicholson was 27-of-28 in field goals and 35-of-37 in extra points for a total of 116 points scored.
Nicholson was 9-of-10 in field goals of 40 yards or more. He had four games last season where he scored three goals in a game and nine games where he scored two field goals.
Nicholson comes in as an instant contributor to a Tide offense that has great potential for efficiency and explosiveness. He was solid through his first three seasons with Miami (Ohio), but now he gets an even better chance to showcase his reliability with a bigger school.
