ESPN: Sad News” Alabama New Coach Call The Alabama Formal Coach “Nick Saban” And Orphan

The coaches who came and went under Nick Saban, many of whom are now running their own programs, are like everybody else in the college football world. They’re still processing Saban’s retirement and have been since he announced Jan. 10 that he was walking away from coaching after winning seven national championships, six at Alabama and one at LSU.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart joked that he would like to fly all the coaches who worked under Saban to his new home in Jupiter Island, Florida, bring in a film crew and simply sit around and tell stories about Saban’s legendary career.

This is ESPN’s attempt to do just that, as we talked to 11 members of the Saban coaching tree, viewing the legendary leader through the eyes of the people who know him best.

Saban’s protégés, including Mark Dantonio from their Michigan State days, Jimbo Fisher from their time at LSU and Smart, Mario Cristobal, Lane Kiffin, Dan Lanning, Steve Sarkisian, Mike Locksley and more from Saban’s 17-year run at Alabama, share their most memorable, funny and moving moments and break down what made him one of the greatest coaches of all time.

From Saban’s decision to replace Jalen Hurts with Tua Tagovailoa at halftime of the 2017 national championship game to helping Sarkisian pick up the pieces of his life. We learn what Kiffin did to provoke an epic “ass-chewing,” about Smart’s awkward first interview and Fisher’s shared “West Virginia hillbilly” ties with his former boss/nemesis. We get insight into Saban’s softer side and some blow-by-blow accounts of Saban’s pickup basketball games.

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has joked over the years that he received his share of “ass-chewings” from Saban during his time at Alabama. But nothing rises to the level of the one he endured during the 2016 fall camp.

The team was in a “good-on-good” drill, pitting the starting offensive players vs. the starters on defense, and even though Kiffin had been warned by other coaches not to go overboard and try to make Saban’s defense look bad, Kiffin couldn’t resist. He was hired in 2014 as Saban’s offensive coordinator with the specific goal of helping modernize Alabama’s offense.

“I’d come from the Pete Carroll camp. I wasn’t wired that way, to let the defense win,” said Kiffin, who spent three turbulent but successful seasons as Saban’s offensive coordinator.

Kiffin had several coaches on his offensive staff present different types of plays, or what one of those assistants recently referred to as “cool plays,” and put them in before practice. Everybody in the offensive staff room knew Saban wouldn’t be pleased.

“We had a really good day on offense, ran some reverses, threw a double pass and had all these touchdowns, and he said that all I was trying to do was win the drill and trick the defense and not help the team,” Kiffin said. “I was like, ‘Isn’t that the point in good-on-good situations on offense, to see if you can move the ball?’

“He was furious.”

His ears ringing from the chewing-out the day before, Kiffin changed it up the next practice.

“Stubborn old Lane, I ran the most generic, basic, under-center offense I could, sort of their old-school offense they ran under Joe Pendry,” Kiffin said. “And the defense killed us. We’d be third-and-8, and I’d have the quarterback under center.”