TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Kalen DeBoer realized he had to change. No, not the black hoodie. Never that. It’s part of the lore now. But Alabama’s second-year coach saw during a season-opening loss to Florida State that his team needed more leadership. Specifically, players needed someone to light a fire under their butts.
So, that’s exactly what he did. He told them before playing Louisiana Monroe, “Everything you do is with bad intentions.” Holding a 21-0 halftime lead over Wisconsin, his message was, “Don’t let up. No mercy.” Coming out of the tunnel to play Tennessee, he smacked the goal post like it owed him money.
All of this surprised Germie Bernard, the senior receiver who had been with him since Washington. The nice guy Bernard knew before, the one he thought didn’t like to raise his voice, is suddenly yelling at people.
Some of this you may already know. But here’s something you may not know or may not have noticed: DeBoer changed his volume and his vocabulary.
Remember when DeBoer was hired in 2024 and we heard that he doesn’t swear? Jeff Tedford, who employed DeBoer as his offensive coordinator at Fresno State, told me, “I’ve never heard him say a cuss word.”
“That’s probably pretty rare with football coaches,” he added.
Talk about a massive understatement. Football sidelines are not for the faint of heart. I’ll never forget covering a Louisville-Marshall game and hearing Todd Grantham dog-cuss his defense so badly that a mother sitting in the stands cupped her young son’s ears and pleaded with him to stop. He did not.
DeBoer was different. Khurtiss Riggs, a longtime assistant under DeBoer, told me point-blank, “There’s no profanity.”
Well, not anymore. After talking to multiple people in and around the program, I can tell you that DeBoer has utilized the occasional expletive this season — not all the time, mind you, but enough to surprise some staff members who were around him in previous seasons.
And, no, DeBoer telling his team before the Georgia game last year that “We’re tough as hell” didn’t count. If you can say a word in church without fear of incurring the Almighty’s wrath, it’s not a cuss word. That was child’s play compared to the pregame speeches I’ve heard about.
There’s proof if you don’t believe me. In a clip Alabama shared on social media during the bye week, DeBoer is shown addressing his team in the locker room before a game. “A heavyweight fight for four quarters with you guys?” he said. “Sign my ass up! Sign my ass up!”
There’s always been a fiery side to DeBoer that people took for granted — he said as much when he was asked last year about not swearing — but he’s different now. More intense. More assertive.
I asked left tackle Kadyn Proctor when he first noticed DeBoer flip the switch.
“After the first loss he came in there,” he said. “Obviously [we] didn’t live up to the standard of Alabama football, and we knew that. But in that locker room, that next game, just a different type of guy. A different guy, and just ripping our ass for real.
“But it’s good to see. Like, you need that.”
Some of the need is engrained in players. Those like Proctor who played for Nick Saban certainly came to expect colorful language.
But some of the positive effect of swearing is backed up by actual science.
Last week, I met with Nicholas Washmuth, a doctor of physical therapy currently studying at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Over coffee, he told me about an annual bench press competition he took part in back when he was an associate professor at Samford University and how a student sent him a news article showing that swearing improves grip strength. He wondered, would swearing improve overall strength as well?
He wound up getting connected with a research team in England that got the ball rolling on the physical and psychological effects of swearing. The backstory was interesting. In 2004, Richard Stephens, a senior lecturer in psychology at Keele University, was with his wife as she gave birth to their second child. The process was painful and, as Stephens would later put it, “she produced a rather impressive selection of expletives during each wave of agonizing contractions.” She later apologized to the staff. Only the nurses told her it was completely normal. Stephens wanted to understand why people swear when they’re in pain. His research found that swearing helps pain tolerance. He later found it helped performance as well.
Washmuth grew up with the “categorical understanding” that swearing is bad.
“But it’s not,” he said gleefully.
Well, it can be. There is such thing as taking it too far.
“But there are some very positive effects socially related to pain, performance, memory and recall,” Washmuth said.
They’ve done countless studies. Washmuth and his team have participants swear every second for about 10 seconds. Because it’s a very controlled study, there’s no yelling. And there’s no script since everyone has a different relationship to what words are taboo and what are not. Interestingly, it differs regionally. The f-word and s-word are the most common. “Damn is up there and we get a few G-D’s,” Washmuth said. Then they perform a task, whether it’s cycling, weight lifting, etc. “And every study we’ve done has shown a heightened performance level.”
Why? The theory is that when an individual swears there’s a physiological arousal similar to a fight-or-flight response. But what Washmuth believes is actually driving improved performance is psychological. They call it the “fuck-it effect.” Less enthusiastic psychologists refer to it as a “mental reset.”
“You’re less likely to care about anything that happens, so you have improved self-confidence, you’re more likely to disregard outside distractions and are more focused,” he said. “Just the fact that you swear, you’re more psychologically in a state of flow.”
Put another way: “You’re less likely to hold back. You’re more likely to go for it.”
They’ve also looked into what effect swearing has in the classroom. They’ve found that teachers swearing diminishes a student’s recall, but there’s a huge caveat to consider: ethics requires researchers tell participants what’s happening. So the theory is students are preoccupied with anticipating a swear word and don’t absorb the lecture.
“But,” Washmuth said, “hands down, all students find the professor more relatable, more approachable, more human. When they swear, it almost decreases that hierarchy bridge between a student and a professor.”
Finally, I told Washmuth why I asked to meet in the first place — what I’d seen and heard about DeBoer and this new way he’s connected with players.
He nodded along as I explained the post-Florida State turnaround. Alabama is 8-1 and ranked No. 4 in the College Football Playoff rankings as it prepares to host No. 11 Oklahoma on Saturday.
“When I hear that the first thing that comes to mind is the idea you’re inviting some solidarity or uniformity with the team,” he said. “So, especially when an authority figure will break taboo, it’s almost like he’s saying that I trust you enough to swear in front of you. It decreases any sort of formality with that exchange. So players are more likely to be themselves, authentic. They’re less likely to be reserved. It heightens emotion. And when that happens, you’re more confident, you’re more likely to be focused and engaged in whatever tasks are front of you. You’re less worried about outside because I have the solidarity of my team. They have my back. They understand me. Because we have this, this risky, taboo thing we’ve engaged in, i.e. swearing.
“So when you have that safety net or that group effect, that tends to improve performance or improve your devotion to the task in front of you.”
The key, he explained, is authenticity. Washmuth doesn’t recommend that someone who never cusses suddenly starts up overnight. If they do, he added, they better be a gifted communicator.
He cited a study in a healthcare setting where some patients said that swearing by a provider could allow them to connect with a demographic other than theirs. Washmuth said, “Like, ‘Oh, he’s human.’ There’s empathy. There’s raw, authentic emotion. He’s portraying that, ‘Yeah, I feel the same way.’ He gets us.”
Which makes sense in a coach-player relationship, too. DeBoer is a middle-aged white man from South Dakota who makes $10 million a year. Every part of that sentence is a gap that needs to be cleared with his roster, and swearing helps because it’s relatable across age, race, geography and financial demographics.
The fact that DeBoer is a very mild-mannered person normally “makes it that much more powerful,” Washmuth believes.
“There’s this psychological theory,” he said. “It’s the Expectancy Violations Theory, where considering the tabooness of swearing, the impact of swearing is dependent on the degree to which it violates your expectations. So a coach who doesn’t swear, it violates the expectations of who you expect that coach to be and that drives impact.”
In the end, there are so many unknowns: Does the amount of time repeating a swear word change the effect? What about volume? Does the f-word have more impact than the d-word? Washmuth brings up a field goal kicker to relate it to football. Would that person benefit from the mental reset of cussing to himself for 10 seconds? What about other forms of self-talk? Would meditation or prayer have the same effect? Or does it depend on the person?
It’s fascinating.
To answer the question he’s always asked, Washmuth has an 8-year-old child and 12-year-old twins, and, no, cussing is not allowed in their home.
“Most people think that I swear a lot, or I think everyone should swear,” he said. “I would actually say the opposite. I think we should limit our swearing. So when we do, it’s more powerful. It’s hard to swear indiscriminately without offending somebody. So why take that risk? But there are likely periods of time or instances where you can swear at the right time for the right reason and in front of the right audience for a very reliable positive effect.”
If I had to guess, swearing either isn’t allowed or doesn’t happen a lot in DeBoer’s home, either. It’s just not how the man’s hardwired.
But for this year’s team, in the confines of a locker room or sideline, he’s shown a willingness to work blue.
Coaches have done a lot more for a lot less of an edge. So why not say “f—k it” and play ball?