The parking lot fills early at Baumhower's Victory Grille.
There's a buzz inside the restaurant ahead of Alabama football's critical game against LSU , and applause fills the room as coach Kalen DeBoer arrives for his weekly one-hour appearance. He shakes a few hands and takes his seat beside Crimson Tide Sports Network host Chris Stewart for the "Hey Coach" radio show.
At Alabama , traditions die hard if they die at all, and that often means eschewing things fresh and unique. But "Hey Coach," for now, is still hanging onto one tradition that has made it very much an outlier: It still takes live, on-air phone calls from listeners.
Doing so creates unpredictability for any coach's radio show, which can occasionally make for some fun moments. But it can also make for some very terse ones if the caller blasts the coach or his team with unhinged criticism. Most coaches can handle a little heat, and sometimes it's deserved. But when a caller's anger needle redlines, it can make for an awfully awkward situation, and one that the vast majority of coaches don't care to deal with.
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A coaching transition often triggers the end of live calls for the coach's radio show at any given school. Lose a coach who took live calls, hire one who won't, and − poof − they're gone. Former Georgia coach Mark Richt took calls on his show, but when ex-Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart replaced him, live call-ins vanished in Athens.
But there are cases where a particular call causes the format to be dumped. That happened rather infamously at Clemson last year after Tigers coach Dabo Swinney was berated by a "Tyler from Spartanburg" who angrily questioned why Swinney deserved an $11.5 million annual salary to coach a team that was, at the time, just 4-4. Swinney fired back, noting that Clemson had won two national titles in the previous seven years. In the SEC, there are no live callers on the weekly radio shows for 12 of 16 schools. An Associated Press report earlier this year canvassed the coach's shows at 80 schools and found that only 10 of them still take live calls.
DeBoer, for one, is still willing to spin the live-caller wheel.
Who knows if Tyler from Spartanburg is really named Tyler, or is really from Spartanburg? Who can be sure he wasn't actually a fan of a Clemson rival trying to stir up trouble and have fun at Clemson's expense? Sometimes, a caller will phone in and tell the screener he or she wants to ask a certain question, only to get on-air and ask something entirely different. That happened on "Hey Coach" as recently as October.
Uncertainties like those are why the format is disappearing so quickly.
The ingredients for a Tyler-from-Spartanburg recipe aren't hard to pinpoint: poor on-field play, spiraling coaching salaries, the emotions of college football fans passionate enough to dial the number and the safety of anonymity can make for an explosive mix. That last factor, the safety of anonymity, is the one Stewart sees as the more dangerous one. "Hey Coach" offers multiple ways for fans to ask DeBoer a question, including a shot at the microphone for those who attend the show in person.
And there's nothing anonymous about that.
"We encourage fans to ask questions there on site," said Stewart. "I've heard them ask a legit question, but not in an attacking way. Asking a legit question in a calm, rational way is fair. But so much of it is emotional, and it's easy to be too emotional when you're on the phone and not looking a guy in the face."
On this particular night, coming off an idle week and a 34-0 shutout of Missouri the prior week, "Hey Coach" couldn't be more tame. DeBoer takes his first question from the always-respectful "PeeWee from Grand Bay," who dials in first each week, and a subsequent call about the LSU pass rush. Between questions that are submitted electronically and those from the restaurant crowd, DeBoer's hour passes without any need to go to the phone line consistently.
Most schools eliminated the risk years ago. At Alabama, one of the most passionate fan bases in college football can still call in and throw its coach a fastball under the chin.
But there's always the chance that next one will be the last.
Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Why Alabama football's 'Hey Coach' call-in radio show is such a rarity
