Once upon a time, a very angry head coach named Nick Saban hired a very ambitious offensive coordinator named Lane Kiffin at Alabama.
At the outset, the two appeared to be an odd match, a marriage of convenience at best. Saban was a legend struggling to adopt the explosive passive offenses taking over college football. Kiffin was a gifted offensive mind whose career had hit its nadir after his firing from USC. The pair won a national championship together in the 2015 season while insisting their relationship was fine.
A new book indicates it was not fine. Not that we needed a heads up.
In an excerpt of the upcoming book “The Price: What It Takes to Win In College Football’s Era of Chaos” shared with AL.com, authors Armen Keteyian and John Talty offer a behind-the-scenes account of the Alabama 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, which the Alabama coach apparently ended up regretting.
From AL.com:
One such moment came when Kiffin called Sexton warning him that an angry Saban was about to call. Why? The offensive coordinator told the head coach “he didn’t know what he was talking about” in a meeting.
True to form, Saban’s less-than-cheerful call came within minutes.
“That son of a b****,” Saban said to his agent, according to the book. “I’m going to fire you, Jimmy, for ever talking me into hiring that narcissistic prick.”
None of this very surprising to anyone vaguely familiar with the two coaches’ personalities. Their (mostly one-sided) animosity was quite public at times, and they haven’t exactly attempted to tamp down the speculation since parting ways.
Saban is famously strict and Kiffin is famously a troll, it wasn’t hard to see where things might go wrong:
The book quoted a Saban conversation with another former assistant about Kiffin being the only assistant who constantly questioned Saban and “refused to adapt Saban’s preferred approach.”
“I ain’t never had a f— coach I can’t control,” a disgusted Saban told this assistant.
Saban and Kiffin worked together for three seasons. Or rather, three seasons minus one game, as Saban famously fired Kiffin before the 2017 College Football Playoff championship game. Kiffin had accepted the head coach job at Florida Atlantic and Saban decided he’d rather Steve Sarkisian running the offense rather than an outgoing coach.
Alabama lost that game, and you can bet Kiffin had thoughts about it.
Saban abruptly retired in January, while Kiffin continues to coach in the SEC with Ole Miss. Saban has since joined the media as a member of ESPN’s “College GameDay” crew, and we can only hope the show ends up covering the Rebels this season.