The unspoken challenge for Greg Byrne at Alabama will be how his out-front, social-media and willingness to be in the spotlight routine plays in a football-centric community.
Byrne carried a higher profile in Tucson than both Rich Rodriguez and Sean Miller. That might not work in Tuscaloosa, where football coach Nick Saban is worshiped.
What if a key Alabama football player commits an off-campus transgression, a brush with the law, and Saban says the player will remain in the lineup?
Who’s going to tell Saban no?
In 1996, Alabama hired ex-Arizona associate AD Bob Bockrath to be its AD. Bockrath, who was an excellent college administrator, the AD at Cal and Texas Tech after leaving Arizona, had to replace ‘Bama’s national championship coach Gene Stallings in his first year in Tuscaloosa.
He chose Alabama blood, line coach Mike DuBose, who played for the great Bear Bryant.
But DuBose was a colossal failure, and after losing to Louisiana-Lafayette early in the 1999 season, Alabama fired Bockrath, not DuBose, until a year later.
But that was a generation ago. Today, Bockrath would be viewed as a home-run hire anywhere. In 1999, he didn’t have Crimson Tide blood and it cost him his job.
Byrne’s timing is much better.
