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Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin eventually joined forces at Alabama after the latter’s brief stint as the head coach at Tennessee, and they were trying to recruit some of the same players prior to that point. That includes A.J. McCarron, who has an amazing story about the lengths both skippers were willing to go to in order to attempt to get their man.
A.J. McCarron was one of the most highly-touted high school quarterbacks in the class of recruits that graduated in 2009, and as most college football fans know, he committed to the University of Alabama before kicking off a college career where he led the team to two national championships.
The decision to head to Tuscaloosa made a lot of sense when you consider McCarron was an Alabama native born and raised in Mobile, and that gave Nick Saban an edge when it came to outfoxing the other coaches who attempted to woo the QB—including Lane Kiffin, who was hoping to stage a coup ahead of his first season at the helm at Tennessee.
McCarron recently launched The Dynasty podcast that’s primarily devoted to covering Alabama football, and on the most recent episode, he shared a very amusing anecdote concerning the process that ended with him joining forces with Saban (the segment in question kicks off around the 29:50 mark).
The QB said he was initially recruited to Alabama by Lance Thompson (who currently has the same role at Florida) before Kiffin poached him after getting a job with the Volunteers.
Saban subsequently replaced him with Jeremy Pruitt, and he knew there was a very good chance Kiffin was going to try to exploit Thompson’s relationship with McCarron in an attempt to get him to swap allegiances before National Signing Day.
He paraphrased the directive Saban gave Pruitt, telling him
“‘Go there, watch his house. I want to know if Lance is trying to backdoor us and steal him away.’
Pruitt comes down, he’s sitting in front of the house, and he had been there for about two days. One morning, I’m sleeping and all of a sudden I get a bang on my bedroom window. I wake up and I’m like, ‘Who the hell is banging on my window?’
I open up the blinds and it’s Lane and Lance near my window. I look behind him and it’s the whole offensive coaching staff for Tennessee. All you hear is Lance saying, ‘LET ME IN! LET US IN!'”
McCarron said he heard from Saban shortly after the meeting before he called Pruitt to find out how he somehow missed the enemy’s arrival only to learn his employee had mistakenly been watching the wrong house on the same street where McCarron lived.
At least it all worked out in the end.