Lane Kiffin compared his time under Nick Saban at Alabama to a parent-son relationship.
That is, of course, the Ole Miss head coach can now appreciate and understand the impact that experience has on him now that he has gotten older.
“That relationship’s like almost in a way how you can struggle sometimes – maybe when you’re in it with a parent and then, you get out, you get older and you get out of the house,” Kiffin said on This Past Weekend with Theo Von. “Then, you’re like, man, he was on to something. He was right on most things. So I look back, I was there for three years. There was friction initially. I looked back, it was all my fault. I’m the assistant. He’s the head coach. Whatever he says, goes. … His way is very, this is the way. There’s not open discussions about it and stuff.
“And I had worked for Pete Carroll as an assistant, so that’s all I knew. And it’s just totally different. So like you come in, you have an open conversation and you’re questioning the process. No, I just was asking, have you looked at this? I didn’t really know how it worked right away, so it took a little bit of time.”
Kiffin, the former Alabama offensive coordinator under Saban, said he also learned what he called “relief syndrome.”
“It took me some time to understand, too, when we were winning and playing really well, coaching really well, he was harder on you because he didn’t want you to have relief syndrome,” Kiffin explained. …
“He just always had this way of thinking like, you never relax. So he went above and beyond to make sure people didn’t have that. We’d win a game and he comes in and just rips us. They were like, ‘Man, we played great, coached great.’ That was because he was guarding against that because he knew that could happen.”
