For Nick Saban, it was Louisiana-Monroe.
Kalen DeBoer also has now endured a stunning loss in his debut season at Alabama with a loss to Vanderbilt that dealt a significant but not necessarily fatal blow to the now seventh-ranked Crimson Tide’s playoff and Southeastern Conference title hopes.
Regardless of how the season turns out, the defeats in 2007 and 2024 would make the short list of Alabama’s most embarrassing losses, at least in the modern era.
DeBoer knows fans who celebrated six national titles in Saban’s 17 seasons won’t soon forget this 40-35 loss in Nashville, but the players can’t afford to dwell on it with South Carolina visiting on Saturday.
“You know outside of the building the game gets held on to for not a day, probably not a week, some people hold on to it for the rest of their life,” the first-year Tide coach said. “But for these guys, they don’t get the choice. We, as a staff and them together, have to move on.”
Saban inherited a program in an entirely different position than DeBoer. But his first Alabama team during that rebuilding process fell 21-14 to Louisiana-Monroe, a result that was so hard to swallow that Saban referenced Pearl Harbor and 9/11 the following week.
“Changes in history usually occur after some kind of catastrophic event,” Saban said at the time. “It may be 9/11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, and that was a catastrophic event.”
Coincidentally, the last time Alabama had lost to Vanderbilt was in 1984 under Ray Perkins, who replaced another iconic coach in Bear Bryant.
The Vandy loss was humbling for a team that had just knocked off Georgia to earn the No. 1 ranking. But it wasn't necessarily catastrophic. The expanded playoffs and the fact that Texas is the only undefeated SEC team remaining mean league and national titles are still within reach.
And DeBoer insists he remains convinced that “we have a great football team.”
“They've got fight in them,” he said. “They want to win bad, they want to pull all the traditional traditions of Alabama football. And no one feels worse about this than all of us here in this building — football team and our coaches.”
Alabama never led against Vandy, was outgained 418-396 and couldn't slow down quarterback Diego Pavia when he was milking the final 2:44 off the clock.
Even two-time team captain safety Malachi Moore lost his temper with late-game behavior he apologized for on Monday.
Quarterback Jalen Milroe entered the game as the Heisman Trophy favorite but was held in check on the ground, though he still passed for 312 yards with an interception and touchdown.
Milroe said after the game the Tide needed to “reflect and build.”
"All we want to do is just continue to compete, continue to acknowledge that we have short-term goals, and we have long-term goals and it's all still achievable if we have the right mindset," Milroe said.
