Lane Kiffin’s Alabama ties go far beyond the three seasons he spent working under Nick Saban. Tuscaloosa helped rebuild his reputation after USC, and together they reached the College Football Playoff three times and won a national championship. So when Saban retired and Alabama needed a new head coach, Kiffin apparently wanted the job badly enough to head directly to Paul Finebaum.
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“He begged for the Alabama job. He called me in the middle of my show one day and said, ‘Can you get me in this [Alabama] job? After Saban left. ‘They won’t call me.'” Paul Finebaum said Thursday on ESPN’s Unsportsmanlike with Evan, Canty and Michelle. “Of course, they hired Kalen DeBoer. And the rest of the Ole Miss story is much better known.”
Kiffin’s connection with Alabama had already produced plenty of history. Despite all the success, Lane Kiffin’s relationship with Saban was not always smooth. Their sideline arguments became regular television material. Kiffin later joked that he could not remember many happy moments with Saban during games because he remembered so many of the times his head coach chewed him out. Then came the strange ending.
Kiffin had accepted the Florida Atlantic job before the 2016 season ended, but Alabama originally expected him to finish the year. That changed one week before the national championship game against Clemson. Saban announced that Steve Sarkisian would take over the offense for the title game. The official explanation centered on Kiffin’s need to focus on his new job and the demands of handling two programs at once.
“[Kiffin] was fired after already announcing he was leaving because he wasn’t preparing the team for the national championship game. Alabama lost the game,” Paul Finebaum said. ” [If] it was Lane Kiffin, [Alabama] would have won the game.”
Alabama lost 35-31 to Clemson. Kiffin went on to coach Florida Atlantic and later moved to Ole Miss. Interestingly, though, Kiffin hasn’t stopped producing strange departures as he left Ole Miss midway through the playoffs. As for Paul Finebaum and Kiffin, the two have been at it for more than a decade now.
Only days earlier, Finebaum was hammering Kiffin over LSU’s eligibility fight involving former NFL players Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris. Finebaum called Kiffin a “51-year-old man behaving like a 16-year-old” and said there were “no adults in the room” around the LSU situation. Kiffin once compared Finebaum to an “ex” who keeps texting.
Finebaum has thrown plenty back at him. He has portrayed Kiffin as the kind of college football figure who always seems to have another story following him. When Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU in December 2025, Finebaum was especially critical of the move and said it fit a pattern of Kiffin creating more drama around himself. That is part of Finebaum’s style, and Kiffin knows it.
Finebaum built his career covering Alabama and the SEC. Kiffin spent three seasons on Nick Saban’s staff and has often talked about what he learned during that time. Both men came out of that Alabama era, which adds another wrinkle to their back-and-forth.