Nick Saban has been around long enough to know exactly what Lane Kiffin is walking into.
So when Saban was asked Thursday on SEC Network’s coverage of SEC Media Days about Kiffin’s first trip back to Mississippi as LSU’s coach, he didn’t bother with a polished answer. He went straight to the kind of blunt, funny warning only he could deliver.
"When you get to that game, give me a call because you're going to break the record for the (expletive)-kicking you get for the place you go back to," Saban said. "Because I have it right now (for) when I went back to LSU after leaving and going to Alabama. I'll give you some coaching points on how to get through that."
Saban knows the feeling firsthand. When he returned to Baton Rouge in 2008 as Alabama’s coach, the reception was anything but warm, even if the Crimson Tide left with a 27-21 overtime win. LSU had already seen him from the other side the year before, when the Tigers beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa in his first season in charge in 2007.
Kiffin’s return to Oxford in Week 3 figures to carry its own edge. It will be his first game back in Mississippi since leaving Ole Miss in a move that was widely seen as messy, awkward and highly contentious last November.
This time, though, the backdrop is different from some of his other coaching returns. Kiffin has already gone back to a former SEC stop once before, after his season at Tennessee, but that came after later stops at Southern California, Alabama - where he worked as an assistant under Saban - and Florida Atlantic. The trip to Vaught Hemingway Stadium, by comparison, is expected to be a far tougher scene.
Kiffin spent six seasons at Ole Miss and turned the Rebels into one of the SEC’s top programs, a team that lived in the Top 25 and finished with a historic 11-1 regular season that pushed Ole Miss into the College Football Playoff. He did not coach the team in the postseason after taking the LSU job.
Asked whether he has been thinking about the reaction waiting for him in Oxford, Kiffin said he has moved on.
"We have so many competitive games and so much work to do, I don't think about it," Kiffin said. "Now, when it first came out, yeah, I thought about it when they said it's the first SEC game and I'm going back there. But I don't think about it anymore."
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Brian Kellys LSU run ended without the kind of breakthrough the program expected, but his record in Baton Rouge still leaves enough behind to make people pause. He won nearly 71% of his games there, which is not nothing in a league that chews up coaches quickly, and it is part of why his name still carries weight whenever the next opening starts to take shape.
What makes the conversation more interesting now is the way Kelly has kept himself visible since leaving. He has been talking publicly and signaling interest in getting back into coaching, and that alone is enough to make some schools look twice at a veteran who has proven he can win games, even if the ceiling at LSU never quite matched the hype. For programs trying to climb without demanding a national-title guarantee, that kind of fit can be tempting. [Read more 🡒]
Lane Kiffin Just Put A Massive Label On LSUs New QB
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Leavitt arrives in Baton Rouge after transferring from Arizona State, where he helped push the Sun Devils into the College Football Playoff quarterfinals last season. Kiffin also sounded encouraged about where Leavitt stands physically after missing part of last year with a foot injury, and that combination of recovery, production and projection gives LSU plenty to watch as fall approaches. [Read more 🡒]