{"id":698841,"date":"2026-04-02T04:42:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T04:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/698841\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T04:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T04:42:17","slug":"paul-finebaum-lane-kiffin-would-have-crawled-to-tuscaloosa-after-nick-saban-retired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/698841\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Finebaum: Lane Kiffin ‘would have crawled to Tuscaloosa’ after Nick Saban retired"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lane Kiffin enters his first season as LSU<\/a><\/strong> head coach this fall. However, there was a time that Kiffin was lobbying to take the Alabama<\/a><\/strong> job, according to Paul Finebaum.<\/p>\n

When Nick Saban retired after the 2023 season, Finebaum confirmed that Kiffin\u2019s interest was there. Given his past with Saban and Alabama as its offensive coordinator, how close was Kiffin to landing the job? <\/p>\n

\u201cDan Lanning was (the favorite) within 10 seconds of Nick Saban\u2019s retirement announcement,\u201d Finebaum said on his show on Wednesday. \u201cDan Lanning was the betting favorite. By the next day, he was out of it because Dan landing didn\u2019t want the job. The guy that did want the job was Lane Kiffin. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe would have crawled to Tuscaloosa, but Greg Byrne and others \u2014 I\u2019m guessing Sabin was probably behind this as well. I guarantee that Nick Saban did not encourage Greg Byrne to hire Lane Kiffin at Alabama.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the Crimson Tide went with then-Washington<\/a><\/strong> coach Kalen DeBoer who most recently led Alabama to a College Football Playoff appearance in his second season with the program. Kiffin, meanwhile, had been the coach at Ole Miss<\/a><\/strong> before Saban retired and after DeBoer was hired.<\/p>\n

Kiffin was at Ole Miss from 2020-2025, and while the stars didn\u2019t align for a return to Tuscaloosa, the result is that Kiffin will now lead one of their biggest SEC rivals for the foreseeable future. Still, Finebaum notes Kiffin took major steps in trying to secure the Alabama job when it was available.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can absolutely confirm that Lane Kiffin was calling everyone imaginable to get him in the door,\u201d Finebaum said. \u201cAbsolute fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were some rumors that DeBoer could have been on his way out of Alabama with the Michigan<\/a><\/strong> job opening. However, Finebaum cited the Crimson Tide\u2019s CFP win over Oklahoma<\/a><\/strong> as the reason why there wasn\u2019t a coaching change this offseason. Michigan went on to hire Kyle Whittingham from Utah<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If DeBoer had moved on \u2014 the same offseason when Kiffin made the jump from Ole Miss to LSU \u2014 it\u2019s unclear whether he would have had the same interest. Regardless, Kiffin has a chance to lead the Tigers in a matchup against the Crimson Tide during the first weekend of November<\/a> in Death Valley.<\/p>\n

All eyes will be on the late-season SEC matchup. All signs points toward the matchup having CFP implications three weeks before the end of the regular season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lane Kiffin enters his first season as LSU head coach this fall. However, there was a time that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":698842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-698841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116333284352044861","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}