Kirk Herbstreit checks Nick Saban after latest defense of Lane Kiffin

From his perch on College GameDay and as one of the most respected people in college football, Nick Saban is still a part of nearly every story in the sport. LSU’s aggressive pursuit of Lane Kiffin this fall was no exception, borne out by Kiffin giving Saban a shout-out at his introductory press conference last week.

Back on air this week to discuss the end of this crazy chapter in the Book of Kiffin, the elder Saban found himself running up against the limitations of his support for the new Tigers coach.

As Saban took up the argument, once again, that Kiffin should have been allowed to coach Ole Miss through the College Football Playoff, it was his own GameDay colleague who stepped in to point out Saban’s seeming hypocrisy.

Saban tied himself in a pretzel explaining how, in 2016, then-Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart was able to effectively prepare for the national championship against Clemson while taking over as Georgia’s head coach. The reason, Saban explained, was that Smart and other outgoing assistants handled the situation with a great deal of “professional integrity.”

That was when GameDay panelist Kirk Herbstreit interjected, reminding Saban that he himself had sidelined Kiffin once upon a time in a very similar situation.

“You did tell Lane to leave after the semifinal against Washington (in 2017),” Herbstreit said. “There was that one example.”

Saban did, in fact, dismiss Kiffin as his offensive coordinator in the lead-up to the 2017 title game. Later reporting would suggest that Kiffin, unlike Smart, was not effectively juggling his duties on Alabama’s staff while also preparing to be a head coach at a new school — in Kiffin’s case, FAU.

“Lane was struggling to handle taking a new job, hiring a new staff, recruiting new players at a new place … and doing his job at (Alabama) the way the players and the rest of the staff thought he should,” Saban said tersely. “So we mutually agreed that it would be better for him just to move on. So it is what it is.”

Kirk Herbstreit just called out Nick Saban on Gameday for telling Lane Kiffin he had to leave once he took the FAU job.

This was right after Saban said he let Kirby Smart stay to finish the season when he took the Georgia job. https://t.co/1qv5PkFPSy pic.twitter.com/u0ZJwL63TZ

— Thad Wells (@ThadWells) December 6, 2025

The example Herbstreit pointed out to Saban here was exactly what many others noted as Kiffin tried to have his cake and eat it too last month. After all, it was a mirror image of the current situation in which Kiffin had one foot out the door. And in that instance, the greatest college football coach of all time determined that Kiffin could not handle it.

So it was particularly confounding, here in 2025, to continually watch Saban ignore his own history with Kiffin to defend the younger coach’s right to keep coaching the program he was leaving.

Clearly, Saban believes this situation is different than that one. Kiffin’s maturation in his personal life is well-documented, and his stint in Ole Miss shows as much.

However, it was much appreciated to see Herbstreit acknowledge the elephant in the room rather than go through another segment in which Saban repeated his defense of Kiffin without addressing their shared history.