The 2025 season was déjà vu for former Ole Miss HC Lane Kiffin. He was fired in the 2016 season, just before the championship game. It was none other than legendary Nick Saban, the then-Alabama head coach, who fired his then-offensive coordinator for juggling two jobs. Yet, the 7x national championship-winning coach has a different tone when it comes to the current Rebels-LSU situation.

During the recent College GameDay broadcast, Kirk Herbstreit questioned Nick Saban about coaches balancing two worlds while coaching their present team. Saban first described Kirby Smart’s situation when he accepted the Georgia job.

“I said, ‘OK, you can go these days and do this, and you can go to the bowl game. Here’s when we’re going to practice. Here’s when I expect you to be here. It was never a problem.”

Saban praised Smart for handling both worlds by sticking with him throughout the title hunt. No drama. No panic. The tone abruptly changed when the topic of conversation turned to Lane Kiffin. It was Herbstreit who brought the Lane Kiffin situation and the dismissal in 2016. “You did tell Lane [Kiffin] to leave after the semifinal against Washington and [Steve Sarkisian] took over the play-calling.”

Saban recalled that moment as the most obvious indication that Kiffin was already half gone. And it wasn’t just one slip. Despite the past instance, Saban insisted that Ole Miss should have continued with Kiffin for the 2025 CFP.

As Saban put it, “That was a situation where Lane was struggling to handle taking a new job, hiring a new staff, recruiting new players at a new place—which was Florida Atlantic—while doing his job [at Alabama] the way the players and the rest of the staff expected. So we mutually agreed it would be better for him to just move on. So it is what it is.”

Inside Alabama’s facility, the holiday break became a revolving door of FAU coaching interviews. Saban could not overlook the cracks in Kiffin’s plan to build a whole new kingdom while also managing the Tide’s offense. According to ESPN, back then, Saban got mad when Kiffin arrived late for a staff meeting. Others recalled that the week Alabama was getting ready for Washington, he was handling FAU hires in Atlanta.

So Kiffin didn’t make it past the semifinal. Steve Sarkisian took over the offense after Saban fired him a week ahead of the national title.

Fans slam Nick Saban for hypocrisy after the latest Lane Kiffin remark

Fans didn’t hold back, and the reactions came pouring in with the raw energy of college football chaos. One said, “Saban – lyin lane couldn’t handle being an assistant and HC, but he can handle being a HC of two teams simultaneously while also making a playoff run. Talk about pushing an agenda. Good grief.” That abrupt change in tone seemed more like a selective memory than wisdom to a fan audience that had followed every turn of the Kiffin-Saban story. To them, this was Saban rewriting the old script.

Others went deeper, slamming what they felt was Saban’s shifting allegiances and polished PR gloss. “Saban is struggling because he isn’t being authentic. His true feelings came out when this all initially started. He said he didn’t think LSU or UF was a better job. Then Sexton gave him marching orders and finders fee to push Lane to LSU and he’s been waffling publicly since,” a fan bluntly stated.

But the strongest pushback came from fans who were unable to understand the logic behind it. They have too many vivid memories of 2016 to ignore this. One admirer yelled, “And that was as an ASSISTANT. How the hell does Saban think Lane would have been able to function as a head coach for Ole Miss while also recruiting, building a staff, etc. for LSU? The hypocrisy is WILD.”

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Another highlighted the obvious contradictions of Saban advocating Ole Miss keeping Kiffin around for the CFP. “He witnessed first hand that Lane couldn’t handle the distraction as an assistant and then thinks he’d be fine as the head coach when he’s leaving for a rival? Terrible take.”

Despite this previous firing, Lane Kiffin continued to be a mentee of Nick Saban. And it was the legendary former HC who convinced the new LSU HC to take the job. “Coach Saban kind of coached at another place in this conference. So I can’t really say exactly what he said, but I’ll say I think the word of Coach Saban, and I respect him. And so there’s a reason,” Lane Kiffin said to the media. So, the fans continued to be shocked as to why Saban wanted Kiffin to continue with Ole Miss.

“Nick Saban has lost it. Does he not realize what he’s saying is almost the exact same scenario?” For a fan base that has long appreciated Saban’s accuracy and dependability, this time, they thought the GOAT was talking in circles and were more than willing to point it out.