It is July 12th, it is 94 degrees in every SEC city simultaneously, and Greg McElroy has had enough. On his Friday morning podcast, the former Crimson Tide signal-caller went full defense attorney for Kalen DeBoer after ESPN dropped its top-ten college football coaches list and slotted DeBoer all the way down at No. 10 — tied with Mario Cristobal, a man whose program has spent four years being described as "on the verge." McElroy came in with receipts: three NAIA titles at Sioux Falls, a 14-1 run at Washington, a 20-8 mark in one-score games, and the pointed observation that DeBoer is undefeated against Dan Lanning, who ESPN ranked fifth. "Coaches who consistently win games that come down to the final possession are, in most cases, outcoaching the opposition," McElroy said, which is true and also sounds like something you say in a eulogy before the firing happens.
The real comedy of the ESPN list is that Lane Kiffin landed at No. 7 — ahead of DeBoer — and McElroy did not let that slide. He noted, with visible podcast-voice energy, that Kiffin went fourteen years without a single Power Conference ranked win and yet the media has spent a decade treating him like the reincarnation of Woody Hayes. Now Kiffin is at LSU with a No. 1-ranked transfer portal haul, a $5 million quarterback in Sam Leavitt, and the full weight of Tiger Stadium expectations he will cheerfully blame on everyone else when things go sideways. If DeBoer is underranked, Kiffin is aggressively vibes-based. Both of these things can be true. DeBoer enters Year 3 with a 20-8 combined record at Alabama, a fanbase that compares every loss to the Saban dynasty like it is a war crime, and a 2027 recruiting class currently parked in the bottom half of the SEC — though an Alabama linebacker's mother took to X to explain that DeBoer literally told everyone this was going to be a small class. Nobody listened. Nobody ever listens.
Meanwhile, up in Knoxville, Tennessee completed its week-long Adidas uniform rollout on Thursday by dropping the Dark Mode alternates, which the university described as "cutting-edge" and "looking forward rather than backward." They are all black. They have orange stripes on the pants. They feature the slogan "I will give my all!" on the inside collar, which is either inspirational or a cry for help depending on how your season goes. The new Adidas Dark Mode is, by the admission of multiple credible outlets, nearly a carbon copy of the Nike Dark Mode Tennessee wore last season. The one time the Vols wore those last year, Oklahoma beat them 33-27 at Neyland Stadium. So the Vols have rebranded their bad-luck jersey, given it a slightly different SEC patch, and sent it back out into the world with fresh confidence. This is what we call growth.
All of this pre-season agony reaches its natural conclusion in eight days, when SEC Media Days descend on Tampa for the first time in conference history — July 20-23 at the JW Marriott. Every coach, three players per program, and approximately four thousand reporters who have been saving their hottest takes since February. The conference is three straight seasons removed from a national championship, the Big Ten has lapped it twice in the playoff era, and Lane Kiffin will be standing at a podium in Florida answering questions about leaving Ole Miss mid-playoff run with the specific grin of a man who knows exactly what he did. Kalen DeBoer goes Wednesday. Alabama fans will spend Tuesday night stress-eating. Greg McElroy will probably have thoughts. So will the rest of us.
