BREAKING NEWS: Bulldogs hire Kalen DeBoer

After Jeff Tedford’s sudden departure at the end of a forgettable 2019 football season, both fans and administrators knew that the clock was ticking to find a replacement. With Early Signing Day hitting on December 18th, the Dogs needed to zero in on their choice, and get their signature on the dotted line before recruits could choose their destinations. The early choice for a lot of Fresno State fans was former OC Kalen Deboer, and that is who the university was able to entice back from Indiana to take over the football program. After two highly successful years as the offensive coordinator under Tedford, where they won 22 games and an MWC title, DeBoer was hired away to Indiana University in 2019. Just like at Fresno State, the improvement was sudden there. The Hoosiers became the top passing offense in the B1G, and are looking at their first 9 win season in decades. All that the former Sioux Falls coach knows how to do is produce strong offenses and win games. He went an absolutely absurd 67-3 while at Sioux Falls, then turned Eastern Michigan into a bowl team before joining the Bulldogs in 2017. An offense that had hovered in the 110s in the last years of the DeRuyter era all of a sudden had life again, and jumped up into the 30s for 2018. Now he is tasked with again fixing a struggling offense, and building a young team back into the title contenders they were in his first stint.

The first step will be to try and assemble a recruiting class for tomorrow. As the choice is DeBoer, it is probably pretty certain that most of the staff will be retained and are actively working to bring recruits in. As of right now, the recruiting class has 9 in it, although it is predicted this will be a smaller class than normal. Even though there is still the traditional Signing Day in February, it is important to have the majority of a recruiting class locked down early, so you know exactly what you need to look for in February. Expect the current staff to continue recruiting through this week, while Deboer finalizes his move, and decides whether to coach Indiana in their upcoming bowl game. After that, it will be full steam ahead, as the Bulldogs look to get back to their winning ways after a 2019 wrecked by injury and close losses. More info will be posted as it comes available, so stay tuned to MWConnection for all of your Mountain West news.