The SEC Spring Meetings are here, and with the annual gathering comes a deluge of quotes from the 16 head coaches in the most intense conference in the country. One coach who hasn’t stopped talking this offseason, though, is Lane Kiffin, and the former Crimson Tide offensive coordinator is stirring things up in Tuscaloosa, even if it may have been unintentional.
In an exclusive interview with Blake Toppmeyer of SEC Football Unfiltered from the USA Today network, Kiffin spoke about his ugly exit from Oxford as he left Mississippi to become the head coach at LSU, something he’s made a habit of since his time at Tennessee in 2009. The social media response to his candid answer is threatening to give life to a wild conspiracy about the end of the Nick Saban era at Alabama.
“This isn’t a marriage that’s going to last forever, most likely, even though you think it is, where both parties are happy, and neither one wants out. You could wish it was, it’s a feel-good story, but they don’t happen, rarely ever,” Kiffin said. “Maybe Nick Saban,” Toppmeyer interjected.
“I don’t even want to go into names here. Like, these are some names that you would say it happened, and I would tell you that in the coaching profession, that actually, it didn’t because right at the end, they made them retire,” Kiffin said.
Now, here’s the question: Was Lane Kiffin insinuating that Nick Saban was forced to retire after the 2023 season and the Tide’s Rose Bowl loss to Alabama?
Lane Kiffin’s “made them retire” comments could spark Alabama questions
There is no credible reporting that Alabama pushed Nick Saban out. Obviously, coaches know more about the machinations within the sport than anybody else, but it’s also not clear that Kiffin was even talking about Saban when he said, “they made them retire.”
Kiffin is a fast talker, so if you heard, “made him retire”, that changes the discussion slightly, but Kiffin also specifically said, “I don’t even want to go into names here,” and in my opinion, that buys him quite a bit of leeway.
Social media accounts have quickly construed these comments as Kiffin claiming Saban was pushed out, and maybe that is ultimately what he meant. Maybe Kiffin doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt with his track record of trolling and his latest scorched-earth ending this offseason, but that’s just not what I hear.
Kiffin wasn’t even the one who brought up Saban’s name, and he seemed to quickly distance himself from it. Plus, why would Kiffin make a claim like that about Saban, who helped to resurrect his career after his failed tenure at USC and who stumped for him last season when he insisted he should be allowed to coach Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff after already accepting the LSU job. There’s no upside to burning one of your biggest allies and the greatest coach in the history of the sport.
Still, the narrative has been sparked on social media, and that could be enough for a conspiracy theory to linger that Saban was pushed out in his final year. Saban may not have had his fastball anymore, and Alabama was not ahead of the curve in the NIL era, which was eating into his recruiting advantage. Still, he made the CFP and won the SEC in his final year. It’s hard to imagine that the administration was suddenly ready to move on.
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