Lane Kiffin shares where his relationship with Nick Saban stands

At one point, Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin was best known for his firing at USC. That was when he landed as a Nick Saban assistant at Alabama and was able to revitalize his career there.

Today, the coaches still have a strong relationship. As Kiffin explained on This Past Weekend w/Theo Von, the pair talk once in a while and the mentorship that Saban provided helped to shape where Kiffin is in his career today.

“Yeah, we do,” Lane Kiffin said. “He’s not a big like text but we talk every once in a while.”

Lane Kiffin came to Alabama in 2014, a year after he’d been fired by USC. There, Kiffin was the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator for three seasons, only leaving after he took the FAU job and was relieved of his duties while preparing for the national championship that season. Despite tension at times during that period between Saban and Kiffin, today Kiffin sees it as an incredibly important learning experience.

“No, you got to call him. He did just learn how in the last like two years to text. He had never texted before. Ever. Like when I was an assistant coach there, he was just like, ‘I’m not texting.’ He just refused. It was like that old school. Like he’s got those old school things that aren’t changing. Then I got a text like two years ago from him that said ‘good luck’ or something like that,” Kiffin said. “And I was like to the group, ‘Dude, I got a Saban text.’ This is amazing. This is Vanderbilt beating Alabama. Like, this isn’t supposed to happen. Never thought I’d see this day, and then Kirby [Smart] is like, ‘Yeah, I got one earlier this year too.’ He’s learned how to text.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Kiffin looks at his relationship almost like that of a parent and child. There were times they didn’t see eye-to-eye, but time has made him better appreciate what he had learned from Saban.

“You get one or two words,” Kiffin said. “But that relationship is almost in a wake like how you can struggle sometimes like maybe when you’re in it with a parent and then you get older, you get out of the house. And then you’re like, ‘Dang, man. He was onto something. He was right on those things.’ So, I look back, I was there for three years. There was friction initially. I look back, it was all my fault. I’m the assistant. He’s the head coach. Whatever he says goes… his way is very like this is the way. There’s not open discussions about it and stuff and I’d worked for Pete Carroll as an assistant. So, that’s all I knew, and it’s just totally different.”

As Lane Kiffin pointed out, prior to his time at Alabama, he had spent most of his time as an assistant at USC. After that, he had been the head coach at two college stops and an NFL stop. None of those situations ended well, and he had a 35-21 record in college and a 5-15 record in the NFL before getting to Alabama. There, he was able to revitalize his career and get another shot at being a head coach, which Kiffin has since jumped on.

“So, you’d come in you’d have an open conversation. Then you’re questioning the process. No, I just was asking. So, I didn’t really know how it worked right away. So, it took a little time… It was just something I wasn’t used to, that way. So, it took a little bit of time,” Kiffin said. “But now that I look back, he was so strict on everything kind of in a parent way, like with his team, with the players, with the coaches, nothing changed. He wouldn’t — we won a national championship and there was a 7:30 staff meeting the next morning. I’m like, ‘What are we meeting on?’ He’s like, ‘We’re behind.’ Because we won the championship and everybody else was recruiting, we’re behind… It’s why he is what he is. It’s why he was so great because it was like the standard never changed no matter what.”

When Lane Kiffin would go on to meet Nick Saban on the field, there was no competition. Saban never lost to his protégé.