Don’t expect Lane Kiffin to go crawling to the parole board to persuade them about how he has been “rehabilitated.”
Kiffin, now 6-3 in his first season at FAU after three as Alabama’s offensive coordinator, conducted an interesting interview with The Athletic’s Chris Vannini. In the Q&A, Vannini asked Kiffin whether part of the reason for wanting to go to Florida Atlantic was to prove to the rest of the country that he’s changed and maybe grown up following his controversial departures from Oakland, Tennessee, and USC. Kiffin said no.
“No, because I don’t care,” Kiffin told Vannini. “This is probably bad in the big picture of what the perception of you is nationally. I don’t do things to try and create a perception of positivity. I don’t do what most people do. ‘Boy, if I do this, it’ll get in the paper. If I do this, it’ll be positive and they’ll write about it. I’m going to go out of the way to say how changed I am so people think he’s so changed.’ Anything I say in an interview is exactly what I’m thinking or is what is going on. That’s how I am. That’s probably not great advice to give someone young in the profession. They should probably do coachspeak.”
That’s a really interesting quote from Kiffin. He is proving that he still possesses strong coaching and recruiting skills and that he can win in a conference that’s not as competitive as the SEC or Pac-12. The more he wins at FAU, the more he will capture the attention of other athletic directors and football programs looking for coaches. But Kiffin’s making it clear: You hire me, you get my personality too, not some watered down version of myself. And that means plenty of Nick Saban trolling.
