Lane Kiffin has long blamed Nick Saban for helping revive Kiffin’s head coaching career, but that doesn’t mean Kiffin refuses to make fun of his old boss.
Kiffin jokingly went into Saban mode at his press conference on Monday when asked if he was a candidate for the head coaching job in Auburn and if he had spoken to anyone in Auburn.
Kiffin said coach rumors were a “product of your players playing well” and there were no discussions with Auburn. Then he quipped, “I wanted to say what I learned from my mentor, if you keep asking, I’ll have to tell you, ‘I’m not going to be the head coach in Alabama,’ OK? So stop asking me. ‘ “
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Kiffin answered the question with his best Saban gesture, then grinned and said, “I shouldn’t have said that, but I just had to.”
Kiffin, who served under Saban as the Alabama Offensive Coordinator from 2014 to 16, was referring to Saban’s quote from 2006 when he was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. According to reports linking Saban to the Alabama head coach position for a month, Saban said on Dec. 21, “I guess I have to say, I’m not going to be the coach in Alabama.”
Two weeks later, on January 3, 2007, Saban was named Alabama coach.
It’s hardly the first time Kiffin has needled Saban, be it about “rat poison” and the “ass chewing” he received from Saban on the Alabama sidelines, or about the joke that three years of work under Saban like Dog years “were. “
More recently, Kiffin told ESPN that he “valued Saban a lot more when I was gone when I was there” and said, “I wouldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for him.”
Kiffin led the Rebels to a 4-4 record in his first season as coach of Ole Miss. You can finish with a victory record in the regular season with a victory on Saturday at LSU.
Ole Miss ranks third in the SEC (39.8 points per game), behind Alabama (49.5) and Florida (41.2). Earlier this season, Alabama defeated Ole Miss 63-48 in a game that saw Kiffins rebels gain 647 yards, the most Alabama has ever allowed in a game.
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