Alabama’s courtship of its eventual football coach, Kalen DeBoer, was a rapid one.

As Crimson Tide athletic director Greg Byrne noted at DeBoer’s introductory news conference, he set out to hire a new coach within 72 hours of Nick Saban’s retirement on Jan. 10 and ultimately did so in 49 hours.

For the focus of one of the most consequential coaching searches in the history of college sports, the experience wasn’t any less frenetic. In an ESPN story published Wednesday, DeBoer said the process that led him to Alabama from Washington, where he had been the head coach the past two seasons, “just happened so fast, all of it.”

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DeBoer told ESPN’s Chris Low he first received a call Wednesday night from the Tide, only hours after news of Saban’s retirement broke. According to the story, DeBoer and Florida State coach Mike Norvell were at the top of Byrne’s list “from the outset.”

On Thursday, DeBoer and his wife met with Byrne and his wife in downtown Seattle, an unusual move in modern coaching searches, which often involve meetings in remote locations where neither party lives.

By Friday morning, he was offered the job.

“I didn't have time to talk to a lot of people,” DeBoer said. “I just knew I wanted the job."

How badly did DeBoer want the position? What was likely its biggest drawback — the seemingly unenviable task of replacing the most decorated coach in the history of the sport, who won six national championships in his 17 seasons at the school — didn’t bother him.

Indeed, he "couldn't say no to that challenge."

During their meeting Thursday, Byrne reportedly asked DeBoer how he would respond to the idea that you never want to be the coach who follows a legend.

"I'm going to embrace it," DeBoer told Byrne. "There's only one person that's ever going to get to do that."

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While DeBoer didn’t have much time, if any, to reach out to those in his orbit, one of the first people he got into contact with after he was offered the Alabama job was Saban, according to the report.

"It was great, just, out of respect,” DeBoer said. “I hope he knows how much it means to me to be coming in behind him."

Washington, fresh off a College Football Playoff berth and an appearance in the national championship game, worked hard to keep DeBoer. On that Thursday, while the then-Washington coach was engaged in talks with Alabama, the Huskies offered him a contract with a base salary of $9 million that would have maxed out at $9.6 million, more than doubling the $4.2 million he earned last season.

The allure of Alabama, though, proved to be too much to resist.

"We loved Washington, the people there, our players, everything we'd accomplished in two years,” DeBoer said. “But I also just loved everything about Greg Byrne and our conversation together and everything that Alabama football stands for, the proud tradition of this program and how deep it runs."

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Kalen DeBoer details Alabama football's courtship to replace Nick Saban