Notebook: Lane Kiffin ‘really happy’ for Steve Sarkisian, Alabama’s next offensive coordinator
Lane Kiffin, Alabama’s third-year offensive coordinator and the former head coach at USC, Tennessee and the Oakland Raiders and the future head coach of Florida Atlantic University, is likely more appreciative of second chances than most.
Perhaps that adds to Kiffin’s excitement at the news that close friend Steve Sarkisian, currently an offensive analyst at Alabama, was named the Crimson Tide’s next offensive coordinator.
Kiffin will remain in that role through the College Football Playoff, after which he will leave for FAU. Then it will be all Sarkisian, who coached at Washington from 2009-13 before leaving for USC, which fired him midway through the 2015 season amid his struggles with alcoholism.
Kiffin has said more than once that he and Sarkisian “grew up together” as coaches. They worked under coach Pete Carroll during the glory days at USC. Both are regarded as bright offensive minds. Both have struggled, albeit in different ways, as head coaches. Both found refuge at Alabama.
“He’s had a rough road,” Kiffin said Wednesday, surrounded by more than a dozen reporters. “So to go from potentially being out for the whole year to right at the beginning of the year, after the USC game, Coach (Nick Saban) hires him. … I’m sure if he were to write a script, that’s how he would have wrote it. ‘I’m an offensive coordinator again,’ versus having to go be a position coach, in less than one year, and it’s at the best program in the country with the best head coach. I was really happy for him.”
Sarkisian joined Alabama’s staff earlier this season as an offensive analyst — similar to the role Jeff Tedford served at UW before taking the head coaching job at Fresno State — and seemed a logical choice to replace Kiffin when he accepted his new gig at FAU.
“I think he’ll play to the strengths of the players. He always has,” Kiffin said. “He’s going to have some good players to have to replace, and he’s got some good young players, especially, obviously the quarterback (Jalen Hurts) he can develop and make better.”
Kiffin, who absorbed more than a few “ass chewings” from Saban on Alabama’s sideline, said he thinks Sarkisian’s personality might be a better fit with the Tide head coach.
“I’m not saying it was a bad thing at all,” Kiffin said of his relationship with Saban. “I would say Sark manages people better than I do at times.”
Get them to the church on time
As part of the week’s Peach Bowl festivities, Washington and Alabama both visited the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King was once co-pastor.
They listened to speeches by civil rights leaders C.T. Vivian, Xernona Clayton Brady and Andrew Young, and toured the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site.
“I spent a lot of time in college, taking a lot of classes about the Civil Rights Movement and things that went on like that,” UW defensive back Kevin King said. “So actually seeing the panel and seeing some of the people who I actually studied, you know, and people who I’d seen in different movies and documentaries when I was in class was actually pretty cool.”
Extra Points
Washington practiced outdoors at Georgia State University again on Wednesday. Players wore helmets, shoulder pads and shorts. Starting outside linebacker Connor O’Brien (knee) was in pads after not wearing pads on Tuesday, and seemed to move around better during the 15-minute window open to media. … Alabama and Washington both visited patients at local children’s hospitals on Wednesday afternoon.
This story was originally published December 28, 2016 at 4:53 PM with the headline "Notebook: Lane Kiffin ‘really happy’ for Steve Sarkisian, Alabama’s next offensive coordinator."