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Ryan McGee
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Attention Wal-Mart shoppers. There is tension in the Tuscaloosa sportswear department.
«Excuse me,» a woman said to a sales associate Wednesday afternoon as she sifted through the endless round racks of Alabama Crimson Tide-branded apparel. She said her name was Mary from Montgomery and she was in town to visit her grandson before fall classes wrapped up and, well, «I was hoping to buy him one of those Coach DeBoer Black Hoodies of Death. Do y’all have any?»
They do not. Neither does Dick’s. Or Academy. Or the Alabama bookstore. Or even the place down at the strip mall behind the Asian buffet, a boutique named Bama Fever.
All those stores do have plenty of something similar. They have black hoodies. They have black hoodies that say Alabama. They even have black hoodies that say Alabama that are made of the same sort of slick material as Tide coach Kalen DeBoer’s. There are also a few internet T-shirt stores and Etsy shops that have them not with any official Bama wording, but rather a non-licensed crimson block lettered «BLACK HOODIE OF DEATH.»
«Yeah, I’ve signed a few of those,» DeBoer himself said Wednesday afternoon, chuckling as he wore a crimson three-quarter zip. He saves the hoodies for game days, and this Saturday is a large one, the SEC championship game in Atlanta. «I suppose that I created the market for the genuine article, but then I also cornered the market, didn’t I?»
No one has the genuine article. Not anymore. We’re talking the matte black Nike Sideline Dri-FIT XL with the simple crimson rectangle stripe, block «ALABAMA» underlined by a centered crimson swoosh. The only person who does have one is DeBoer, and he has seven, but even he doesn’t know exactly where they are kept. That’s the purview of Kyle Smith, Alabama’s director of equipment, who bought up the entire inventory from the campus bookstore when he realized that was DeBoer’s preferred pullover, not long after the coach replaced Nick Saban ahead of the 2024 season.
Florida State. The Tide were trounced by the Noles 31-17. He switched to the hoodie the following week … and his team won eight straight. His only black-garbed blemish this season was a two-point loss vs. Oklahoma in Week 12. In all, DeBoer is 17-1 in regular-season games while wearing a Bama coal coat.
Some are short-sleeved, most are long-sleeved, and there have been some variations of design. See: last week’s rectangle-less version for Bama’s nail-biter win at Auburn in the Iron Bowl. But all have been victorious. So much so, that when his players lit their traditional cigars after defeating Tennessee in the Third Saturday of October, they were warned to steer clear of Coach, so as to not singe his hoodie.
Even opposing coaches have become aware of its powers.
we’ve got opposing coaches asking the tough questions on our weekly media call 😂@CoachDrinkwitz | @KalenDeBoer pic.twitter.com/OpUZqQUY0O
— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) October 8, 2025
The hope for Alabama and its fandom is that the hoodie will be unbeatable again in a rematch with a team that has worn black for as long as anyone can remember, Bama’s champ game archnemeses of late, the Georgia Bulldogs.
«I’m not superstitious, but I am ‘stitious,» Tide quarterback Ty Simpson said Wednesday. «So Coach had better be wearing that hoodie in Atlanta.»
«Don’t worry, the original is coming back this weekend,» the coach assured his signal-caller and everyone else, citing chilly nighttime post-Thanksgiving temps for the substitute onyx outerwear he broke out at Auburn. «We’re indoors this weekend, so it won’t be cold, but it also won’t be hot. It’ll be perfect.»
Syracuse team in the Sugar Bowl. Had the Orange won, they would likely have clinched a share of their first national championship since 1959. With four seconds remaining, Auburn was at the Syracuse 13-yard line, trailing 16-13. Dye elected to kick the field goal and end the game in a tie, avoiding the loss but also denying Syracuse its unblemished season.
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Spurrier long ago released a signature line of visors for purchase. Today, one can buy a convertible lid from his Gainesville sports grill for $25, a pink edition to support the fight against breast cancer for $29 and an autographed «Goat» visor autographed by The Visor himself for $90.
When Jim Harbaugh returned to Michigan in 2015 to coach his alma mater, Ann Arbor clothing stores immediately sold out of khakis, especially the $8 version that had once been piled high at, yes, the local Wal-Mart. Why? Because Michigan Men knew very well of their new leader’s old habit of wearing tan slacks everywhere he went, from the sideline to church to even the weight room.
Why? Again, practicality.
«When I was at San Diego [as head coach of the Toreros from 2004 to 2006], I had Dave Adolph on our staff and he was a mentor for me,» Harbaugh said on the eve of Michigan’s CFP semifinal Rose Bowl win over Alabama in 2024. «He always wore khakis, everywhere, and when I asked him why, he explained it was all about pockets. There was a place for pens, the script, the whistle, chewing gum, whatever. It just made perfect sense. So, the next day, that’s what I had on and have ever since.»
He indeed went to Wal-Mart and stocked up on the $8 versions, much to his wife’s chagrin. She even took her complaints to the public. By 2017, he had landed a deal with Lululemon. And yes, you too can dress like Captain Khaki for the reasonable fashion fee of around 70 bucks.
Just had a nice chat w/ Jim Harbaugh about his khaki game. He upgraded to @lululemon pants and says, «I’ll never wear anything else.» Smart. pic.twitter.com/uDny4Ceqc8
— Jeff Darlington (@JeffDarlington) March 24, 2017
However, don’t be fooled into thinking this is some sort of 21st century NIL-era fleecing of college football fans. The origin story of a coach cashing in on his look takes us back full circle to Tuscaloosa.
For the first three of his six national championship seasons at Alabama, Bear Bryant wore a pair of different hats, either a brown fedora he had started wearing after a Kentucky sportswriter had accidentally left it at his home in Lexington, or a baseball cap adorned with the logo of his employer, from Maryland to Kentucky to Texas A&M to Alabama. He was first seen wearing the headgear that became part of his eternal image, the houndstooth fedora, in a photo used by Sports Illustrated on Aug. 15, 1966.
Some say the hat was a gift from the always-flashy Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley, who also owned the local Birmingham Barons. Others have said it was presented to Bryant by New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin after Bryant convinced the Jets to sign his quarterback, Joe Namath.
In 1966, the Tide were denied another natty by poll voters but did post an 11-0 record while winning the SEC championship and the Sugar Bowl. Bryant was rarely seen without the houndstooth ever again. Even his bronze bust that stands guard at the door to the Alabama football offices wears the fedora, standing out alongside the lid-less heads of Saban, Gene Stallings and the other Bama coaches to lead their teams to rings.
In 1981, two years prior to his retirement and death, Bryant went to a former player, Bill Battle, who had become a sports marketing pioneer, wondering if there might be an opportunity to capitalize on the popularity of his houndstooth hat. Soon stores throughout the South were stocked with houndstooth hats, houndstooth ties, houndstooth matchbooks and, naturally, houndstooth teddy bears.
Today, more than four decades after Bryant’s death, Alabama football games are awash in houndstooth. Local department stores sell houndstooth dresses and miniskirts. Local Tuscaloosa tux shops rent houndstooth bowties and cummerbunds for weddings and proms. A call to a local adult bookstore, well-advertised via billboards up and down Alabama’s I-25, confirmed that yes, houndstooth … ahem … dancewear is in stock. As the saleswoman at the shop said, and it was clearly not the first time she had delivered this line, «Nothing is sexier than winning.»
While we’re not quite ready to keep going down that road, we are ready to take it back down University Boulevard on the Alabama campus. That’s where the Bear Bryant Museum has multiple houndstooth fedoras behind glass, all of which were worn by the Bear. And where they also now have one of Kalen DeBoer’s «Black Hoodies of Death» on display, with fans lining up every game day, snapping pics and perhaps cooking up their own Louvre-like heist schemes, seeking to finally score Tuscaloosa’s most impossible coat commodity.
Across the street, in the Mal Moore Athletic Facililty, the man who has made that jacket famous was hard at work, surrounded by staff and players, all dressed in black.
«It’s like something from ‘Star Wars,’ like Yoda or Darth Sidious, a power you can’t explain,» Simpson attempted to explain. «You don’t question its power, but you’d better respect it.»
«The respect comes from winning,» added Obi-Wan DeBoer. «As long as you keep winning, people will respect it. So we’d better keep winning. And I will wear whatever I have to until we squeeze all the winning out of it.»
