Nick Saban dishes on what helped Lane Kiffin prepare to coach at such a high level

Alabama coach Nick Saban has had dozens of meetings with former assistant coaches over the years, and his meeting with former offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin on Saturday will be among the most interesting. Saban was asked what it takes for a guy like Lane Kiffin to prepare to coach at such a high level on a day-to-day basis and his answer offered some insight into his process.

Kiffin has clearly tried to model some of his coaching habits after Saban, who he calls the ‘best coach to ever do it.’

“I think you have to have a systematic approach,” Saban said on Wednesday. “I can’t speak for Lane, but he was here and did a really good job when he was here, and he’s obviously done a good job every place he’s been since he’s been here.”

Kiffin has his Ole Miss squad sporting an 8-1 record, still alive in the SEC West race, though certainly on the outside looking in.

He’s got the kind of team that has troubled Alabama over the years, and Kiffin has also not been shy about poking the bear this week. First he chided Paul Finebaum for providing Saban with ‘GOAT fuel’ by declaring the Alabama dynasty dead, then he hit social media with a photo of a book on Nick Saban that Saban said this summer he didn’t endorse and didn’t plan to read.

All that aside, though, Saban did provide some interesting answers that offer insight into what he thinks Kiffin might have gleaned from his time in Tuscaloosa.

Did Nick Saban help Lane Kiffin prepare to coach at a high FBS level again?

Saban has long been known as a career reviver of sorts, with countless troubled former coaches joining his ranks, sometimes in positions as lowly as an analyst as they hit the reset button and try to get their career back on track.

Kiffin certainly fits the bill.

So while Saban answered the question about how Kiffin goes about building his program in a rather generic sense, there’s probably a lot of truth in it.

“For me, I can speak to a systematic approach that, in terms of trying to develop a culture in an organization that develops a standard and an expectation of what people need to do so they create value for themselves and so we can have success as an organization, they can have success individually, we can have success as a team and have good people in your organization who are actually carrying out the principles and values of the organization, the standard that you want to set in terms of the culture, whether it’s discipline, work ethic, people being responsible and accountable to do their job, pay attention to detail,” Saban said.

“All those things sort of make a team what it is. Obviously you’ve got to get the right people, so you’ve got to do a good job of recruiting in all parts of your organization, coaching staff as well as the players that you bring in. I think all those things are critical.”

And then there’s the whole having a good operation from top to bottom part.

“Having a good system, offensively, defensively, that players have a chance to be successful in, I think that’s obvious too as an important part of the overall system and program,” Saban said.

We’ll get a chance to see how far along Kiffin is in that process on Saturday when Ole Miss hosts Alabama in a game that kicks off at 3:30 p.m. ET with a national broadcast on CBS.