Lane Kiffin served as the offensive coordinator under Nick Saban at Alabama during the 2014, 2015 and 2016 seasons. They won 40 games with four losses during that stretch, reached two College Football Playoff National Championships, and won one.
To this day, Lane Kiffin credits Nick Saban with a lot of his success in recent years. He learned a lot from the greatest coach in college football history was able to take those lessons with him as the head coach at FAU and Ole Miss.
Despite their close relationship, Kiffin was often chewed out by Saban— even when the Crimson Tide was up by 28 points with less than one minute left. It was not necessarily frequent, but common.
Chris Low and Harry Lyles Jr. of ESPN spoke with the 48-year-old, and other former assistants, about their experiences on staff in Tuscaloosa. They asked Kiffin to tell a story about Saban that nobody has heard.
Their request led to a phenomenal anecdote from fall camp in 2016.
Nick Saban laid into Lane Kiffin!
Alabama entered into the “good-on-good” drill, where the starting offense faces the starting defense. Kiffin had been warned by other assistants on staff not to make Saban’s defense look bad, but on that day, he didn’t care.
Kiffin and his offense scored a lot of touchdowns on the defensive group. They ran a few reverses, and even a double pass. Everything clicked on that day.
Saban was furious. He ripped his offensive coordinator for only trying to win the drill and “trick the defense” instead of helping the team.
In response to the reaction from a day prior, Kiffin went in the complete opposite direction during the next practice. It was an intentional decision to make his point.
Stubborn old Lane, I ran the most generic, basic, under-center offense I could, sort of their old-school offense they ran under Joe Pendry. And the defense killed us. We’d be third-and-8, and I’d have the quarterback under center.
— Lane Kiffin, via ESPN
That also did not go over well with Saban, who wanted an explanation for Kiffin’s mundane and ineffective offense. The answer he received did not go over well.
“I’m just running what I thought you would want me to run against the defense.”
Again, it was just me being smart-ass me.
— Lane Kiffin, via ESPN
At that point, Saban made everybody but Kiffin leave the room so that he could pop off.
I have to sit there, and he is screaming at me, standing over me screaming as I’m sitting in my chair. I thought he was going to fight me physically. So, yes, I got a lot of ass-chewings, but that’s the biggest one and one that no one saw. But I deserved it.
— Lane Kiffin, via ESPN
Although Kiffin will never forget how Saban reacted on that afternoon, it is a hilarious comparison that sticks with him. The legendary head coach compared him to P.J. Funnybunny— a cartoon character from a children’s book that is always up to no good.
Kiffin had to sit there and endure the reaming, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how Saban was that knowledgeable on his bedtime stories!