“We Need Some Leadership”: Nick Saban on Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss Drama

Lane Kiffin has taken over the college football headlines with all the drama surrounding his future at Ole Miss. He recently said he will decide on his future with the team after the Egg Bowl against Mississippi State next week. That announcement has players and potential recruits pressing pause on their own plans with the Rebels. This is a pattern Nick Saban has seen many times before.

How does it usually go? A college football coach signs a long extension with a school, and then bigger programs start firing their coaches in the middle of the season. Those schools usually turn around and try to poach names like Kiffin who might be eyeing a bigger opportunity. This time around, the schools in question are LSU and Florida.

Saban dislikes this entire setup because it creates an awkward dynamic between players and coaches while the season is still going on. But he did not blame the players or coaches for the situation.

“We need to take a better approach to the business aspect of what we do in college athletics. In the NFL, you cannot leave your team until you’re finished playing. You can’t talk to another coach in the regular season. There’s a defined time that you can talk to them if they’re in the playoffs. That’s the way it should be,’ Saban said on College GameDay. 

In the NFL, and in most other professional sports, players and coaches aren’t allowed to negotiate contracts with other teams if they’re already part of one. However, in college, this couldn’t be further from the case. Players and coaches tend to discuss transferring to other schools regularly throughout the season.

The issue has persisted for years too, and Saban is tired of it. 

“This is not a Lane Kiffin conundrum. This is a college football conundrum that we need some leadership to step up and change the rules on how this gets done,” Saban stated.

The former Alabama HC even went on to call out the leadership of the NCAA to fix this issue, and it was well deserved. Players who are committed to or playing for a school shouldn’t have to deal with the controversy of their coach leaving in the middle of a season. After all, Kiffin’s Rebels are currently 10-1 and in the thick of the CFP picture. A distraction is the last thing the players would want.

But at the end of the day, college football has always been a bit unorthodox. Especially now with the introduction of NIL, players are already flipping schools like crazy during the offseason. This is to say that it’s understandable how we got here with this issue and that there might be bigger fish to fry than Kiffin’s conundrum.