The 10-year redemption of Lane Kiffin

Many remember the 2006  Rose Bowl between the Texas Longhorns and USC Trojans for the 2005 National Championship as quite possibly the greatest college football game of this generation. However, former USC offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin remembers that night in a more heartbreaking, solemn sort of way. This was something that he was not shy in making public knowledge prior to his Alabama Crimson Tide offense taking the field Monday night in Glendale, Arizona for the College Football Playoff National Championship.

Ten years? Has it really been that long since Kiffin’s highly-publicized journey through the football coaching ranks began?

Let’s rewind a little and examine exactly how we got to this point in time.

For as horrible as that night in Pasadena was for Kiffin and the Trojans in January of 2006, it appeared a certainty that things were about to get better for the young, upstart coach. Really, things were looking better for him than maybe any other assistant coach at the collegiate level in history, as a little over a year from that evening he was hired as the new head coach of the Oakland Raiders by then-owner Al Davis. The quirky Davis was no stranger to bold moves, but to pluck a new head coach from the college ranks who was not only merely an assistant, but so young? Unheard of!

There were immediate questions as to whether the hiring would work out. It didn’t. After going 4-12 during his first season as the head coach of the Raiders, it was pretty clear that the personalities of Davis and Kiffin clashed — again, something expected from the day Kiffin was hired. When he started the 2008 season at 1-3, that was it. Instead of dancing around the issue, not only did Davis fire the young coach, but he then proceeded to chastise him before the media in an unprecedented display lacking all decorum and professionalism.

Okay, so the NFL experiment didn’t quite work out. Again, not many expected it to. No harm, no foul really.

From there the smart move was to return to college and rebuild an image that was tarnished by Al Davis in the public forum. The assumption was that everything would be fine after Kiffin landed a pretty lucrative college football job with the Tennessee Volunteers. He was taking over for a certified Knoxville legend, Philip Fulmer, who had fallen on hard times but had previously built a championship program.

What at first appeared a redemption story for Kiffin, turned out to be anything but.

In 2009, he took over the Volunteers program and led them to a 7-6 record — a two-game improvement from 2008 — and their offensive output was significantly better. Not blowing anyone out of the water by any means, but at the time the program was a bit of a project. Tennessee needed a reboot and this offensive genius hired to start pumping life into the Vols.

Then redemption turned to vilification. Kiffin taught (and learned) a valuable lesson in how one man can piss off a lot of people in the southern part of the United States. Accomplishing the task is rather easy, really. All it entails is leaving a prominent program after only one season — having promised the fan base much success — for the greener pastures of the West Coast.

Kiffin made a personal decision when jumping programs, and the reality of the situation was he did nothing here to repair his reputation. In one swift move he became the most hated man in the state of Tennessee, not to mention a lot of other parts of the South where Volunteers fans resided. He was basically a babyface professional wrestler turning on everyone in 1997 and joining the nWo.

Regardless of the circumstances, Kiffin took over at USC, where, again, many expected things to come full circle. An assistant under Pete Carroll during the glory days, he would restore the Trojans’ status quo among the ranks of college football. After compiling an 8-5 record during his first season, the Trojans then went 10-2 in 2011. However with the school hampered by sanctions left behind from the Carroll era, there was nothing to play for at season’s end. Regardless, there was optimism with the 2012 season looming. The Trojans were eligible for bowl play once again and were a sexy pick to win the BCS Championship that year.

As had been the theme with Kiffin, when things look up, they come crashing right down. USC finished the year at 7-6 and ended the once-promising season with an embarrassing loss to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in the Sun Bowl. The leash on Kiffin had immediately shortened heading into 2013.

Following a savage beat down at the hands of the Arizona State Sun Devils, he was fired in ungracious fashion before the month of September even came to a close. It was at this point where most people had given up on the former wunderkind and written him off for dead.

Fast forward towards the present day, and the one person who did not write Kiffin off was the last man anyone thought would give him an honest look: Nick Saban. After then Crimson Tide offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier had departed for the same position with the Michigan Wolverines in January of 2014, Saban made the move that had the collective college football world scratching its collective head, tabbing Kiffin as Nussmeier’s replacement. At first glance, it was about as close to mixing oil and water as you can get.

But, just when the destructive habits of Kiffin seemed apparent, he proved prognosticators wrong.

In the last two seasons, not only has Kiffin shown that he can co-exist with Saban, but the two have proven deadly together. Moreover, Kiffin has learned a lot that he didn’t know before about  running a program. He’s soaked in the Alabama culture under the greatest coach in the history of college football, something he was not afforded the luxury of nearly a decade ago.

They say that in life that everything happens for a reason. That some failures are meant to happen for greater success down the road. In the case of Kiffin, never have these adages seemed more apt.

Ten years after he was in Pasadena wondering how the most explosive offense in college football history came up short in the most-anticipated game in college football history, Kiffin stood on the field in Glendale on Monday night, his team having put up 45 points against one of the best defenses in college football. He waited a decade for the moment, and it was everything that he could have imagined.

At this point it’s not a matter of if but rather when Kiffin will head up another college football program. He wasn’t ready 10 years ago, but the more you watch him ingrain himself in the Alabama culture, the more confident you feel in him to lead his own program to success in the near future.

Really, all he has left to learn at this point is to remember when the team buses leave …