When Alabama opens the Kalen DeBoer era on Saturday night in Bryant-Denny Stadium, two freshmen have a realistic chance to start: wide receiver Ryan Williams and cornerback Zabien Brown.
Butin the wake of Nick Saban's surprise retirement in January, there was a chance Alabama could have missed out on both five-star talents. Williams decommitted hours after Saban's announcement before re-committing to the Tide's new staff and signing his letter of intent weeks later. And Brown,according to a new book co-authored by CBS Sports and 247 Sports national college football writer John Talty, also wavered before being convinced to stay.
Talty and co-author Armen Keteyian explained in "The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football's Era of Chaos,"released earlier this week, that Alabama "greatly benefited from a Saban discount" in its NIL operation, with players taking less money to join the Tide and learn from Saban.
That included Brown, who graduated early from Mater Dei High School in Californiaand joined Alabama for Rose Bowl practices in December.
"Could Zabien have gotten a lot more money? Absolutely," Courtney Brown, Zabien's mother, said in the book. "But if that's not what matters to him, that's not what matters to me. He chose the school based off the coaches, based off Nick."
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Talty and Keteyian wrote that Alabama's NIL funding lagged behind some of its top competitors under Saban, quoting one source that donors got "lazy" given Saban's continued success. When Saban retired, that advantage disappeared and Alabama scrambled to retain its players in DeBoer's first weeks as bigger NIL offers were floated from other schools.
Brown had enrolled early at Alabama and started classes the day of Saban's retirement. As explained in "The Price," Brown wavered in his commitment to stay with the Tide before eventually being convinced to stay by new defensive backs coach Maurice Linguist -- and general manager Courtney Morgan.
Here is the remainder of the Brown story from "The Price" from Talty and Keteyian:
Brown was considering doing the same [entering the transfer portal]. Saban's retirement came as a complete shock as Alabama had stressed during the recruiting process that the legendary head coach wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. When Courtney Brown asked Tide receivers coach Holmon Wiggins about the Saban retirement rumors earlier that year, he emphatically shut them down. "He'll basically die on the field," Wiggins told her. "He has more energy. He's still keeping us out 'til midnight."
After all he had gone through—the summer classes, skipping social activities, giving up the last half of his high school senior year, diligently trying to memorize the Alabama playbook ahead of spring practice—Brown was angry that on his very first day of classes, Saban bailed on him. He wondered whether any of it was even worth it.
"I think he felt burned," Courtney Brown said. "He was immediately like, 'I'm not going to stay here.'"
Brown called Jackson Zager, Zabien's agent, to talk through the possible options. Zabien hadn't entered the portal, but there would be considerable interest if he did. Brown and Zager talked several times that first week, with the young agent impressing the recruit's mother with his calm in the face of chaos.
Brown didn't care at all about how much NIL money he made at Alabama—it was all about the long-term benefits of playing under Saban tomake his NFL dreams come true—but after Saban's shocking decision, that would change. "I knew if we went elsewhere we'd be leaning in and negotiating for a much higher NIL deal," Brown said.
Alabama had no interest in letting it get to that point. Not long after leaving his job as Buffalo's head coach to take an assistant job at Alabama, Mo Linguist jumped on a plane to meet with Brown and other parents out in California to sell the vision of the new regime. Ultimately, it was enough to convince the Cali five-star to stay put in Tuscaloosa."
Brown, who appeared on the Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year watch list Wednesday, saw first-team reps much of fall camp and enters the opener in an apparent ongoing competition with Wake Forest transfer DaShawn Jones to start at cornerback opposite USC transfer Domani Jackson.
