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A chance meeting with Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin in Atlanta in 2014 presented Keary Colbert with a tough decision.
Colbert, a standout receiver at USC from 2000-03 and an NFL wideout from 2004-11, was then the wide receivers coach at Georgia State when he attended a Georgia high school coaches’ luncheon and bumped into Kiffin, a familiar face from his days with the Trojans.
Kiffin mentioned the possibility of Colbert joining Alabama as an “analyst.” For Colbert, taking the position would mean leaving a full-time assistant coach job with a program that had just moved up to the FBS and the Sun Belt.
One path was traditional for a young assistant — a position coach with a fledgling program. The other was an off-field role with the premier power in the sport and the nation’s top coach in Nick Saban.
Colbert chose Alabama, where he spent the 2014 and ’15 seasons as an offensive analyst on a coaching and support staff that has grown to include eight analysts who work with nine position coaches and four graduate assistants.
“I had to make a decision to leave a full-time job and go to Alabama and learn from Coach Saban and learn from his program and people on his staff,” Colbert says. “It was a growth opportunity for me to get underneath that umbrella and to use those experiences going forward.”