It wasn’t a walk in the park for Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban. The college football GOAT coach surprised everyone when he brought in the “dismissed” USC head coach just a year after Kiffin lost his job with the Trojans. But was that hire a truly abominable move on Saban and Alabama, as most people think?

Alabama is set to release a new book called “The Price: What It Takes to Win In College Football’s Era of Chaos” by journalists Armen Keteyian and Former AL.com writer John Talty on August 27. The book documents Saban’s unexpected hiring of Kiffin in 2014 under sports agent Jimmy Sexton’s influence, which later turned into frustration with the Alabama HC calling Kiffin a “narcissistic prick.” Still, Talty thinks it was a win-win for both sides at that point in time.

John Talty discussed Kiffin’s three seasons with Nick Saban in Alabama as the offensive coordinator with Carl Reed and Smoke Dixon. Despite Saban’s eventual infamous angry rants on Kiffin’s hire, Talty said about Lane Kiffin, “I think he was the perfect person to help (shift Alabama’s offense). But Nick Saban deserves more credit for realizing he needed someone like that and he needed to evolve.”

At that time, Alabama needed someone to help modernize the Crimson Tide offense by shifting the run-heavy style of play to more of an aggressive wide-open attack. While Talty agrees that Saban and Kiffin are poles apart, he thinks “they were perfect for each other at that moment where Lane needed to get rehabilitated… And Nick needed someone who could push him outside his comfort zone, maybe challenge him a little bit, push him to be more aggressive offensively.” After hiring Kiffin in January 2014, Saban said in a September news conference, “We communicate well during the game… Nobody thought it was a good hire… But I thought it was a good hire… I got beat up like a drum over doing it and now, all of a sudden, it’s great.” But it would eventually go downhill as the background story shows Kiffin really pulled Saban’s last nerves. 

How Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban’s relationship went downhill

The trouble began in Tuscaloosa when Lane Kiffin showed his defiance by refusing to “adapt to Saban’s preferred approach.” The new Alabama OC created tension in a meeting when he asserted that Saban “didn’t know what he was talking about.” Imagine being the GOAT hearing this from a castaway coach whom he graciously took under his wing!

Of course, it didn’t sit well with Saban, who threatened Sexton for talking him into hiring Kiffin. He told the agent, “That son of a b*tch. I’m going to fire you, Jimmy, for ever talking me into hiring that narcissistic prick… I never had a f*cking coach I can’t control.” Eventually, in January 2017, Kiffin was fired before the CFP Championship game and later became FAU’s HC. To this day, Kiffin remains grateful to Saban despite their rocky relationship. His SEC Media Days speech last month reveals, “I’m so very appreciative to him those three years and really him taking a chance on me.” Still, Kiffin won’t be able to fulfill one of his dreams after Nick Saban’s retirement earlier this year.