Nick Saban pushes back on his critics for advising Lane Kiffin in LSU move

Amid all the controversy surrounding Lane Kiffin‘s chaotic move from Ole Miss to LSU last weekend, Nick Saban caught some stray vitriol for his perceived role in helping Kiffin make the dubious decision. The new Tigers head football coach only added fuel to that fire when he implied his former boss at Alabama practically rubberstamped the intra-conference move during his introductory press conference Monday.

“I felt like everybody I talked to outside of the state (of Mississippi) all basically said the same thing, okay. They all said, ‘Man, you are going to regret it if you don’t take the shot and you don’t go to LSU,'” Kiffin said Monday, seemingly referring to Saban and ex-USC coach Pete Carroll. “It’s the best job in America with the best resources, and to win it. And, it’s obviously been done here before by a number of people.”

For his part, Saban made it clear he merely provided Kiffin — who worked as the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator between 2014-16 under Saban before reviving his head coaching career at FAU in 2017 — a friendly sounding board to help the 50-year-old head coach. He wanted to make sure he was ready for such a career-defining move.

“I don’t make anybody’s decision for them,” Saban said Friday during his weekly appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. “I just try to offer the best advice that I can, relative to them being able to accomplish what they want to accomplish.”

Upon hearing that, McAfee playfully pushed back and parrotted a talking point that some SEC fans — especially those based in Oxford and Tuscaloosa — may have had by suggesting Saban should’ve told Kiffin to “kick rocks” when he came calling for career advice. Saban rejected that suggestion outright.

“If I did that, though, I wouldn’t feel good about myself not helping people that were colleagues of mine who helped us be successful and created value in what we were able to accomplish. You appreciate that, and you’re loyal to those people who were loyal to you and helped you,” Saban continued. “So I would have a hard time dealing with that personally, and I think there’s a lot of people out there that say, well what kind of person would be that way where he wouldn’t help his colleagues to make choices and decisions that hopefully help them accomplish the goals that they have, which is up to them, not up to fans or anybody else, or me.”

Nick Saban: ‘You think I wouldn’t have been catching Hell on the internet if I’d said stay at Ole Miss?’

After some more playful ribbing from McAfee, Saban once again doubled down and pointed out that it was a no-win situation for all involved, simply based on the reality of SEC fandom.

“I don’t think you can go from one SEC school to another without a whole bunch of people getting pissed off. That’s just the fact of the matter,” Saban added. “Because you have these passionate fanbases on both sides of the fence, … (but) I did not make a decision for anybody. I did not. So you think I wouldn’t have been catching Hell on the internet if I’d (told Kiffin to) stay at Ole Miss?”

For context, prior to his legendary 17-year tenure at Alabama, where he won six of his NCAA-record seven national titles, Saban spent five seasons (2000-04) in Baton Rouge as LSU’s head coach. During that time, Saban directed the Tigers to the 2003 BCS National Championship, the program’s first national title since 1958, before leaving for a failed two-year coaching stint in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins.

Despite his departure at LSU, Saban is still mostly beloved down on the bayou, mostly for helping spark an incredible streak of success that saw both of the Tigers’ subsequent head coaches — Les Miles (2005-16) and Ed Orgeron (2017-21) — each win national championships in their third seasons in Baton Rouge. Of course, that streak ended with the Tigers’ most recent head coach, Brian Kelly, who was fired Oct. 26 after failing to even make the College Football Playoff during his four-year tenure in Baton Rouge.