By KACE KIESCHNICK, Tiger Rag Staff Reporter
When LSU hosts Texas in Tiger Stadium Nov. 14, it will not just be a homecoming for Longhorns quarterback and New Orleans native Arch Manning, it will also be a reunion between former coaching partners – LSU head coach Lane Kiffin and Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian.
And Kiffin, 51, and Sarkisian, 52, have much in common in addition to each becoming excellent, play calling offensive coordinators and head coaches after playing quarterback in college – Kiffin at Fresno State and Sarkisian at BYU.
Kiffin and Sarkisian coached together Pete Carroll’s USC staff from 2001-03 and from 2005-06. After Kiffin was USC’s head coach from 2010-12 but fired early in the 2013 season, he was replaced by assistant Ed Orgeron on an interim basis. Then Sarkisian left the Washington head coaching job to become USC’s head coach before the 2014 season. After taking a leave of absence during the 2015 season for alcohol misuse, Sarkisian was fired later that year.
Kiffin landed at Alabama under coach Nick Saban following his 2013 USC firing from 2014-16 as offensive coordinator. Sarkisian also landed at Alabama after his 2015 USC firing in 2016 as an offensive assistant and stopped drinking. Kiffin got the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic late in the 2016 season with plans to continue coaching Alabama’s offense through the playoffs. But Saban let Kiffin go before the national championship game because of eratic behavior. And Sarkisian replaced Kiffin as OC for the national title game, which the Tide lost, 35-31, to Clemson.
Sarkisian left to become the Atlanta Falcons OC in 2017 and ’18 before becoming Saban’s OC at Alabama from 2019-20. He became the Texas head coach before the 2021 season. Meanwhile, Kiffin won at Florida Atlantic and got the Ole Miss coaching job before the 2020 season, and he quit drinking in early 2021.
Along the way, each coach got divorced – Kiffin once and Sarkisian twice.
Through their interwoven paths, Sarkisian has had a front row seat to the Lane Kiffin experience and vice versa.
“I’m very proud of Lane,” Sarkisian said at SEC Media Days on Thursday. “I know he’s made a lot of changes personally. I’m really proud of him, and I think those personal changes have led to on-field success. I think there’s a direct correlation to that, so I’m very happy for him.”
Kiffin opened up at Media Days about how his hiatus from social media has been good for him and the value of subtracting bad habits, such as drinking.
“If you really want to keep growing, a lot of people add things as they go versus subtracting things that are issues,” Kiffin said. “Whether that’s diet, whether that’s in my situation – alcohol, whether that’s things that are subtracted along the way – toxic relationships, things that as you grow you decide, okay, I’m going to continue to grow.”
Sarkisian has noticed the growth in Kiffin as others have noticed the growth in Sarkisian.
“I think Lane’s a really good coach,” Sarkisian said. “Everywhere he’s been, there’s been success. Obviously the most recent success of what he’s had at Ole Miss.”
Kiffin is 116-53 in 14 years as a college head coach. His teams have won 10 games or more in seven seasons, including each of the last three seasons. He has failed to reach a bowl game only three times, including his final season at USC when he was fired after just five games.
His 55 wins in six seasons at Ole Miss is second only to Georgia’s Kirby Smart (73-9) among SEC coaches during that time.
“He’s always going to assemble a talented roster,” Sarkisian said. “He’s always going to be creative, whether it’s through schemes, through recruiting, whatever that looks like. He does not look at things traditionally. He’s always going to try to think outside the box to find a unique way to accomplish something, and so I expect him to continue to do that at LSU.”
The first creative problem solving of the Kiffin era was figuring how to fill a roster that lost 66 players from the 110 on last year’s team – many of whom Kiffin did not want back.
The creative solution — spending more than $40 million on the No. 1 transfer class in college football. How did he come up with that one?
Sarkisian knows.
“Now he’s got more resources,” he said. “He’s got more support, so I think that that’s an opportunity for him to continue to grow on the path and the journey that he’s on.”
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