Ryan McGeeDec 5, 2025, 07:30 AM ETCloseSenior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com 2-time Sports Emmy winner 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year Follow on X
Kalen DeBoer denies any interest in leaving Alabama for Penn State (0:19)Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer says he has never had a conversation with Penn State and adds that he’s happy in Tuscaloosa. (0:19)
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?”
You see, Nike had discontinued that particular pigskin parka. When Smith went on his shopping spree, that was his motivation, to supply his new boss’ demand. Now T-Town shoppers following in his wake are inspired by far more than a fear of losing out. Their fear is losing football games.
A year ago, amid much predictable guy-who-succeeded-the-GOAT criticism, DeBoer posted a 9-4 record in his inaugural campaign at Alabama. However, some detected a silver lining in the middle of the maelstrom. More accurately, a black lining. Whenever the coach donned the jet-black anorak, Bama won. Whenever he wore something else, the Tide lost.
Like all scientific theories, the Black Hoodie needed to survive another series of testing before it could be stamped as proven.
DeBoer started the 2025 season dressed in a crimson golf shirt on the muggy sideline of 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.
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.”
College football coaches in search of the perfect fit. It has long led to a grandstand following them down the fashion runway. Even if it has usually happened by accident.
“I’m from South Dakota, where it’s always a little chilly,” DeBoer reminded us. “So black hoodies are what I have always worn. I wish I had some deeper reason for you. It’s just what I like, and it’s practical.”
Therein is woven the theme of coaching apparel that becomes the uniform for all who pay to watch coaches coach. From Jim Tressel’s Buckeye-colored sweater vests (which he still wears as Ohio’s lieutenant governor) to Joe Paterno’s highwater britches and black shoes to the Woody Hayes block-O baseball cap that is still sold in Columbus sporting goods stores, emulating the look of one’s gridiron leader has always been en vouge.
“I just wore that because it was comfortable for me, because I can tell you that I didn’t wear a lot of short sleeves when I was head coach at Wyoming,” Dye said in 2018. “I can also tell you that people will only start wearing whatever the coach wears when he’s winning. If he’s losing, then all they will dress up is one of those scarecrow things that looks like you that they can set on fire outside your office.”
Or to send you an angry message from an opponent. On New Year’s Day 1988, Auburn faced an undefeated 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.
Angry New York sportswriters began referring to the Auburn head coach as Pat “Tie” Dye, and a local Syracuse radio station began a tie drive, collecting 2,000 neckties and shipping them to Jordan-Hare Stadium.
“I thought maybe I could pick out a couple to wear, but they were all really ugly,” Dye recalled, laughing. Instead, he autographed each one and sold them for $100 apiece, raising $20,000 that he donated to Auburn’s general scholarship fund. “If people are willing to buy it, you might as well figure out something to do with that.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”