Once upon a time, a very angry head coach named Nick Saban hired a very ambitious offensive coordinator named Lane Kiffin at Alabama.
At first, the two men seemed like an odd couple, a marriage of convenience at best. Saban was a legend who struggled to embrace the explosive, passive attacks that pervade college football. Kiffin was a gifted offensive mind whose career had hit a low point after he was fired from USC. The duo won a national championship together in the 2015 season while insisting their relationship was good.
A new book says it wasn’t right. But we didn’t need to be warned.
In an excerpt from the upcoming book, “The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Chaos Era” shared with AL.comAuthors Armen Keteyian and John Talty provide a behind-the-scenes look at Alabama’s coaching staff during the Saban-Kiffin era as part of a chapter on their mutual super-agent, Jimmy Sexton.
Sexton reportedly pushed Saban to give Kiffin a chance after the USC fiasco, something the Alabama coach apparently came to regret.
According to AL.com:
One such moment came when Kiffin called Sexton to warn him that an angry Saban was about to call him. Why? The offensive coordinator told the head coach “he didn’t know what he was talking about” during a meeting.
True to form, Saban’s less-than-enthusiastic call came a few minutes later.
“That son of a bitch,” Saban allegedly told his agent, according to the book. “I’m going to fire you, Jimmy, for convincing me to hire that narcissistic prick.”
None of this is very surprising to anyone who is vaguely familiar with the personalities of the two coaches. Their (mostly one-sided) animosity was sometimes quite publicand they haven’t really tried to tone down the speculation since their split.
With Saban known for his rigor and Kiffin for his trollish side, it wasn’t hard to see where things could go wrong:
The book cites a conversation Saban had with another former assistant, who said Kiffin was the only assistant who consistently questioned Saban and “refused to adapt Saban’s preferred approach.”
“I’ve never had a coach I couldn’t control,” Saban told his assistant, disgusted.
Saban and Kiffin worked together for three seasons. Or rather, three seasons minus one game, since Saban fired Kiffin before the 2017 College Football Playoff championship game. Kiffin had accepted the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic, and Saban decided he’d rather have Steve Sarkisian run the offense than an incumbent coach.
Alabama lost that game, and you can bet Kiffin had it in mind.
Saban abruptly retired in January, while Kiffin continues to coach in the SEC with Ole Miss. Saban has since rejoined the media as a member of ESPN’s “College GameDay” team, and we can only hope the show ends up covering the Rebels this season.
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