Lane Kiffin has made it abundantly clear that coaching at Alabama was not something he enjoyed, and he gets more and more candid about his time in Tuscaloosa by the day.
In an appearance on “The Dan Le Batard Show” this week, Kiffin said his departure from Alabama has reminded him that football is supposed to be fun.
“It doesn’t have to be miserable,” Kiffin said, as transcribed by Sam Hellman of 247 Sports. “I used to laugh when I’d walk down the Alabama hallway and see all the national championship pictures. Look at the faces on the coaches. It looks like they’re at a funeral.”
Kiffin said the only thing he looked forward to at Alabama was gameday, but even then he grew tired of getting chewed out by Nick Saban when the Tide were blowing opponents out.
“I like gameday, but it’s only three hours and 15 minutes,” he said. “You have the best players, so you know you’re going to win. And you’re out there and you’re scoring a million points and a million yards. But the last 15 minutes of the game when you’re up by 30 and you hand the ball off left instead of right, so you get your a– ripped.”
Saban demands perfection, and you could argue that the great ones always do. Bill Belichick never seems satisfied after a win no matter how dominant the New England Patriots look. But Belichick is never seen berating his assistants on the sideline.
“He’s just mad to get mad,” Kiffin said. “He’s feeling like everyone’s too comfortable. I don’t know where he gets it from. It’s just like, ‘I need to rip somebody.’ I never understood it. I don’t do it. Someone used to joke that he’d get a memo in the fourth quarter that they showed me on TV more than him, so he was going to make sure that he ripped me to humble me. So I don’t really know why he does it.”
Kiffin has trolled Saban every chance he gets since he left Alabama, so his comments are not exactly a surprise. He seems to genuinely hate his former boss, though he admitted Saban is a better coach than him. Still, Kiffin may never get tired of trying to prove how horrible Saban is to work for.
