Report: ‘Lots of drama’ surrounding Lane Kiffin departure at Alabama

There may well be more than meets the eye going on with regards to Lane Kiffin’s departure at Alabama.

The school announced Monday that Kiffin was leaving as offensive coordinator effective immediately to begin focusing on his new head coaching job at Florida Atlantic. It appeared surprising and abrupt at first glance with a title game looming, but a series of reports in the aftermath of that statement indicated that there’s a lot more going on, and it has been building for some time.

FOX Sports’s Bruce Feldman tweeted of “lots of drama” behind the scenes surrounding Kiffin in the past week.

Not shocked Nick Saban has made this move now.. Heard there was LOTS of drama inside the #Alabama program with Lane Kiffin in the past week.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) January 2, 2017

Furthermore, Pat Forde of Yahoo! Sports indicated that Kiffin has had issues with head coach Nick Saban that go back much further than that.

There was talk at SEC title game about Kiffin being gone after that game. Some folks w ear to the ground said Saban had had enough of him.

— Pat Forde (@YahooForde) January 2, 2017

With few details, we’re left to speculate. Kiffin did draw a lot of headlines when he hopped on the coaching carousel, particularly in his failed pursuit of the Houston job. Saban may have seen it as a distraction for a team with championship aspirations, and he did try to downplay the rumor mill last month. Perhaps it had to do with gameplanning, or maybe the two men simply never got along and it was always a marriage of convenience.