Hayes: With Nick Saban retiring, only 1 coach is capable of replacing the GOAT: Lane Freakin' Kiffin
There’s only one way this can end, only one coach who can boldly step into the shadow of Nick Saban at Alabama and pull it off without hesitation or trepidation.
Only one coach who won’t be overwhelmed by the moment of grabbing the wheel at the biggest program in college football, or the passionate and obsessively maniacal fan base that comes with it.
Don’t overthink it, Alabama. Hire Lane Kiffin.
Hire the best fit for the job. And by best fit, I mean the coach best prepared to backfill seamlessly into the most difficult follow in the history of coaching.
Bigger than Gene Bartow following John Wooden at UCLA, or Jon Scheyer following Coach K, or whoever eventually (maybe sooner than later) follows Bill Belichick at the Patriots.
And yes, bigger than Ray Perkins following Bear Bryant.
How in the world do you follow a coach who won 6 national championships, and elevated a blue-blood program to the envy of all college football? A coach with 12 seasons of at least 12 victories — including 4 seasons of 14 wins! — and a record 44 first-round NFL Draft picks.
A coach who — considering the tenuous nature of college football, the competition and ever-changing player management — is the greatest ever at his profession. In any sport.
The shorts answer is you don’t.
No one wants to be the guy who follows the legend. Everyone wants to follow the guy who followed the legend.
It is here where we return to Kiffin, who frankly, doesn’t give a damn about any of those semantics. He’s seen the circus and knows all its flaws.
When you get fired on the tarmac at LAX at 4 in the morning, and lose the best job in college football (at the time), you’ve pretty much seen it all.
He has been to the big top and ridden the roller-coaster and seen the bearded lady — and nothing is going to faze him. Not white knuckle fights with Georgia, Texas and LSU, and certainly not a lovingly unhinged Alabama fan base that demands perfection.
Then complains about how it was executed.
The expectation at Alabama is winning every game, every year. Anything less is devastating.
You think Clemson coach Dabo Swinney wants to walk into that, after getting bent this past season when some guy from Nowheresburg called his radio show and had the temerity to challenge the state of the program?
Swinney will more than likely get the first call from Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne. An Alabama alum and a walk-on-to-riches story that can’t be denied, he’s the perfect fit.
But once Swinney says no (because no one wants to follow the legend), the next call is to Texas coach Steve Sarkisian (who will also say no), and more than likely to Oregon’s Dan Lanning after that.
At that point, the inevitable of Kiffin will arrive. A coach who knows the rocky yet highly-rewarding landscape in Tuscaloosa, who has Ole Miss — Ole flippin’ Miss, everyone — on the verge of a monstrous breakout season in 2024.
A coach who just set the Ole Miss record for single season wins (11), including a New Year’s 6 bowl rout of Penn State. A coach who can recruit at the same high level Saban did at Alabama, and has a proven track record of recruiting and assimilating impact players from the transfer portal.
Kiffin knows how to reach young players, and knows offense as well as anyone in the game. In 4 short seasons at Ole Miss, he has redefined his coaching career and won at least 10 games in 2 of the past 3 seasons.
Again, at Ole Miss.
If you’re still hung up on the history of how he flat left Tennessee after 1 season, or what happened at USC (where he was dealing with the loss of 30 scholarships from the previous staff’s NCAA violations), or how his time at Alabama ended when Saban fired him before the national championship game because Kiffin was trying to serve 2 masters (Alabama, and his new job at FAU), you’re dragging useless baggage.
You’re not seeing the big picture.
Swinney isn’t following Saban. Sarkisian has just as good a job at Texas and is primed to reap the rewards of his hard work.
And Lanning? I don’t need to explain the last time a former Alabama assistant (Mario Cristobal) arrived at Oregon and won big (bigger than Lanning) — and has since sputtered in his first major job.
Alabama fans don’t do sputter, everyone.
James Franklin isn’t moving the needle. Nor is Mike Norvell or Kalen DeBoer or any other latest flavor of the month. And certainly not Urban Meyer.
Kiffin isn’t the same coach he was in his 30s, and isn’t the same man now in his 40s. He’s a ball coach, and he’s grounded — and he already turned down a better job (Auburn) last year to stay and continue the buildout at Ole Miss.
He has seen it all at Alabama, and won’t be overwhelmed by the enormity of the job and all of those collateral tentacles that squeeze the life from you. If all of that doesn’t convince you, maybe Saban can.
Want to know what Saban truly thought of Kiffin? He took him from the scrapheap of coaching in 2014, and welcomed him into his meticulously built Process — and gave him carte blanche to change anything he wanted on the Alabama offense.
The game was changing, and Saban — the greatest coach ever — needed an answer on offense. He chose Kiffin.
There’s only one way this can end.
Don’t overthink it now, Alabama.