Lane Kiffin won’t be overseeing the Alabama offense in the title game versus Clemson next week, and according to ESPN’s Brett McMurphy, Kiffin was allegedly let go due to his tardiness to meetings, getting left behind on media day, and public “ass-chewing” comments.
Late to meetings, getting left behind at media day, public “ass-chewing” comments contributed to Lane Kiffin’s exit, sources told @ESPN
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) January 2, 2017
Kiffin responded to those allegations on the Paul Finebaum show refuting them all and explaining why he was relieved of his duties before the title game.
Here is what Kiffin said about the ESPN report:
That’s not true. The missing the bus thing — the media was there. We’re sitting there (at media day) and I was doing every interview that I was supposed to do. I walked straight from there out, and the buses had already left. They had other cars for us there, too, so it wasn’t a big deal. The bowl had other cars and were shuttling people back and forth so that kind of got blown up. There was no distraction as far as that. As you look at the game, I said all week that that was a really good defense. I know, especially down here sometimes, there’s not a lot of respect for that part of the country playing football, but those guys have given people problems all year long. They don’t give up a lot of explosive plays. The game plan was — with a true freshman quarterback and especially once our defense was playing the way they were — to hand the ball off and not throw it a lot. We were extremely heavy running the ball. The plan was going in that Bo would carry the ball and touch the ball more than anyone on our team. We thought he had a great month of preparation and would do a really good job. (The plan was also) don’t turn the ball over. That was the only way we were going to lose that game. That’s why we were very conservative. We’re not (worried) about what the score is or how many yards we have. It was to win the game. Even later in the game, it was to not even run the quarterback because the game was going in our direction and we didn’t want him to get hurt.
He also followed up here on if Nick Saban forced him out:
There’s no way on that. We’ve had an unbelievable run. He’d be the first one to tell you that we’ve got a true freshman quarterback. I think anybody would have signed up at the beginning of the year if we’d said ‘hey, we can get to the national championship game and be 14-0.’ We’re one of a few teams in the history of college football and the quarterback is the SEC Offensive Player of the Year. It’s been an awesome year, and we’ve had a great time. This simply came down to that we feel Sark may give us the best chance to win this game with this being a short bowl week, and I’ll do everything I can to assist that.
No real way to determine what party is telling the truth here, but it is odd that Kiffin will not be finishing the job that he started.