Lane Kiffin: 'Nick Saban doesn't know what Twitter is'
— -- Florida Atlantic?coach Lane Kiffin has gone to great lengths to take digs at Alabama?coach Nick Saban on Twitter, prompting many to question whether he has made it a hobby to troll his former boss.
"Everybody writes that I'm trolling him," Kiffin said during an appearance on The Dan Le Batard Show on Wednesday. "What you don't realize is Nick Saban doesn't know what Twitter is. So he's never even been on Twitter. You can't troll somebody who doesn't see it. I'm really not trolling him."
Kiffin has become a must-follow on social media, if only for his shots at Saban. He adopted a rat poison hashtag after Saban told reporters last month that he was telling his players not to buy into all the positive things being said about the Crimson Tide.
"All that stuff you write about how good we are, all that stuff they hear on ESPN, it's like poison," Saban said at the time. "It's like taking poison. Like rat poison."
Over the weekend, after Alabama's loss to Auburn, Kiffin asked on Twitter, "Hmmmmmm Can u rat poison urself." And just last week, Kiffin retweeted a Photoshopped image of Saban wearing ripped jeans after the Alabama coach complained about how they had become fashionable.
"I just like to have fun with the fans," Kiffin told Le Batard. "This profession, I don't know why, you're supposed to be so serious and just be so proper. ... People tell me all the time, agents or other people, other athletic directors and presidents, they don't like when you joke around and stuff and re-tweet things. And I said, 'Well, I don't work for them. So I don't really care.'
"I think what I do gets criticized, and it's actually the right thing versus what other people do that give you coach speak."
He was asked about working for Saban and the late Al Davis, who gave Kiffin his first head-coaching job with the Oakland Raiders in 2007, at age 31.
"Isn't it amazing, the parallels between the two?" Kiffin said. "[Former Yankees manager] Joe Girardi came to practice the other day, and I was asking about Steinbrenner. And I said, I wonder if those three really were so similar, that it's crazy I worked for two of them and, obviously, Joe Girardi working for the other. ... Very demanding, very controlling, very hands-on, but all three extremely successful also."
Kiffin was also asked about his recollection of leaving Tennessee for USC in 2009.
"Things burning," Kiffin said. "I remember that."
The news that Kiffin was leaving Knoxville after one season was met with anger and hurt by Tennessee fans. The night he told the team, fans and students and players mobbed the campus streets, growing in numbers as the night wore on. Somebody set a mattress on fire, and then another. Others burned piles of Lane Kiffin T-shirts. Kiffin remained holed up in the football complex as blue lights from police cars flashed down below.
"I remember a private jet on a runway, and a cop car taking us to it, getting on. And the next thing I knew, I was landing in Los Angeles, California, with my kids and wife. We never went back to the house. Never went back except for the two times when I ended up at Alabama, where we went back there to play road games at Knoxville stadium to beat them really badly."
What did he remember about being in Knoxville as the Alabama offensive coordinator for the 34-20 win in 2014 and the 49-10 rout in 2016?
"I was trying to score one point for everything they burned," Kiffin said.
Kiffin said he took the way that Tennessee fans reacted to his departure for USC as a positive.
"I know it's going to sound crazy," Kiffin said. "If you leave somewhere and they're having a party, they're excited. They're celebrating, that means you did a bad job. That means they're glad you're gone.
"If they're burning things, and they're upset, and they hate you, and they're pinging rocks and calling your wife names, and all those things ... if they're doing that, that means they actually loved you because you were doing a good job. We had beaten Georgia and South Carolina and took Alabama down to the wire, so I took it as a positive that they were excited about what was going on."
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