After three seasons with Florida Atlantic, Lane Kiffin is back in the SEC after recently taking the Ole Miss head coach job. As a guest on The Dan Patrick Show on Wednesday, Kiffin said he didn’t miss coaching in the SEC every day, but he did when he saw big matchups or the conference title game.
Leaving FAU, he said, was about regularly facing the best players and coaches in the country, and he’ll have a chance to do that now in the SEC West, which includes LSU, Auburn and his former team, Alabama. Without going into details, he said he had other options, but Ole Miss was the right fit.
“I was at Alabama for three years, and we lost two regular-season games and both were to Ole Miss,” Kiffin told Dan Patrick. “So I got to see what the place looked like when it was rolling. So it’s not like going to a place that you’ve gotta do something that’s never been done before.”
Nick Saban hadn’t reached out by that point, Kiffin said, but he received a message through someone that the Alabama coach is happy for him and said it was well-deserved. And now the two will go up against each other annually, first with Ole Miss hosting the Crimson Tide in October 2020.
When Patrick asked Kiffin how long he thinks 68-year-old Saban will continue coaching, the former Alabama offensive coordinator said:
“I think a long time. I do. I mean, what else are you going to do? … He does golf, but he’s miserable. And I mean that in a way — it’s why he’s so good. He is singularly focused on the University of Alabama and football at Alabama, every minute of every day — even if he’s golfing, even if he’s on a boat. He’s got his recruiting calls to make every night, whether it’s Christmas or whatever it is. It doesn’t matter. Every day is the same, and that’s why he’s so good. So I don’t know how he could retire.
“I think my dad’s like that. My dad’s turning 80 this year and still coaching for us, walking around the field, meeting players, helping young coaches. So there are certain people like that I call, like, prisoners. They can’t go in the real world, like Shawshank Redemption. When Brooks [Hatlen] goes in the real world, he can’t do it. He’s like, ‘Wait, I need to be in prison.’ You know? So they come back.”
Kiffin also weighed in on whether or not former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer will return to coaching after walking away at the end of the 2018 season. The latest rumors about Meyer is that Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys are interested in him replacing Jason Garrett, who is still the 6-7 team’s coach.
“I do,” Kiffin said when Patrick asked if he thinks Meyer will coach again. He continued:
“And that’s not from anything Urban has said to me so I don’t want some rumor mill [starting]. … Maybe [in the NFL]? He seems more of a college fit just because of his ability to recruit, but maybe if he wants to have a little than in college because college is yearlong. The NFL nowadays, coaches work half a year because of the NFLPA and the agreements [they’ve made]. You know, a lot of these staffs are one week on, one week off in the offseason, which they don’t have in college.”
Here’s Kiffin’s full interview on The Dan Patrick Show:
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