The confetti had not stopped falling inside Georgia Dome, and Lane Kiffin stood on the turf, at about the 30-yard line, and considered his immediate future. He had straddled the line between Florida Atlantic head coach and Alabama offensive coordinator for a month. One game remained, the biggest game, after Alabama had throttled Washington in a College Football Playoff semifinal on Saturday. Kiffin imagined nothing would change.
“I’ll be back in Alabama,” Kiffin said. “We do stay here tonight. We’re going to leave in the morning. I’ll be with the team. It’s a recruiting dead period. It’s not like we’ve got a month. We basically just have a little bit longer of a week. It’ll all be dedicated to Alabama. The No. 1 focus will be finishing what we started.”
The stunning announcement Alabama made Monday afternoon may have blindsided Kiffin. Nick Saban declared Kiffin will “focus on his new head coaching job at Florida Atlantic.”
What that means is, Saban could not stand Kiffin being around his program, even for one more week, the seven days before the Crimson Tide face Clemson in a national title rematch.
Kiffin helped Saban during his three years in Alabama, modernizing an offense that had started to become dated, leading three different quarterbacks to three Southeastern Conference titles and three playoff appearances. But Saban helped Kiffin much more. Kiffin earned $1.4 million in a high-profile job. He landed on his feet after a humiliating exit as Southern Cal’s head coach, when Kiffin admitted there were few schools soliciting his services.
And now their relationship has ended awkwardly, as most relationships with Kiffin tend to do. When he parted ways with the Oakland Raiders, owner Al Davis used a slide show to illustrate his misdeeds. He left Tennessee with a disorganized, late-night news conference and with a crowd of angry students and fans gathered outside the football complex. USC fired him at a private airport in the wee hours.
And now Alabama has dismissed him on the eve of the national championship.
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