Lane Kiffin is about to run into an old colleague with a long, tangled past.
When LSU lines up against Texas this week, Kiffin will be facing Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian, a coach he has known for years and worked alongside in more than one stop. Their connection goes all the way back to USC, where the two first crossed paths in 2001 and spent time on the same staff from 2001 to 2003 before linking up again in Los Angeles in 2005 and 2006.
“We have a really unique relationship. It goes back a long time … I was a first-year tight end coach. He was a GA actually, coaching the quarterbacks with Norm Chow, and then just kind of a really intertwined, strange thing of kind of growing up in those years and having the great offenses together," Kiffin said.
One of their most productive stretches came in 2005, when Kiffin was the offensive coordinator and Sarkisian coached the quarterbacks. The two shared playcalling responsibilities, and USC’s offense was a monster, putting up 49.1 points and 579 yards per game.
Their careers kept circling back to each other after that. Kiffin left USC for the Raiders job, then later returned as head coach.
After Kiffin was fired from USC, Sarkisian took over the program. Kiffin later resurfaced at Alabama as offensive coordinator, and Sarkisian joined the Crimson Tide as an offensive analyst.
When Kiffin left for the FAU head coaching job, Sarkisian moved into Alabama’s offensive coordinator role.
As head coaches, Kiffin and Sarkisian have already matched up three times. All three came in the Pac-12, when Sarkisian was at Washington and Kiffin was at USC. Kiffin won two of those three meetings from 2010 to 2012.
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