In 2009, at only 33 years old, Kiffin came to Tennessee fresh off a stint as the youngest head coach in the modern era of the NFL, replacing long-time coach Phillip Fulmer, and was anointed the savior of Volunteer football.
In one year, with a limited class of recruits, Kiffin made a dramatic impact on Tennessee’s level of play. Offensive production skyrocketed, Tennessee beat conference rivals South Carolina and Georgia, and a team that had won only five games the year previously found itself bowl-eligible. And then after only a year, with almost no warning, Kiffin left on the night of Jan. 12, 2010.
While Kiffin held a press conference that night to announce his departure to take the head coaching job at USC, Tennessee students rioted, blocking exits from the athletic complex and burning mattresses in the road. To this day, Kiffin is something of a pariah in Tennessee, used in political attack ads as an illustration of deceit. And on Saturday, nearly five years later, Kiffin will return to Neyland Stadium – this time, in crimson and white.
“I think it’s only a distraction if you allow it to be a distraction,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said of Kiffin’s return. “So if it doesn’t mean anything to us and we can stay focused on what we need to do what’s best for our team, then that’s the way you manage it, that’s the way you handle it, that’s the way we need to look at it. So it doesn’t really mean anything to us. The game, our players, their players. That’s what means something to us, and that’s what should mean something to every coach on our staff.”
Saban has some experience with Kiffin’s situation, having coached at LSU for many years before returning to a hostile Baton Rouge crowd with Alabama.
“It was very negative, getting hanged in effigy and burned at the stake, and just about everything that could happen happened,” Saban said. “The way I tried to manage that with the players is to let them know that that was going to happen and to not be affected by it, and that it would probably be pretty rowdy when we got off the bus to go to the locker room, but that would really have nothing to do with what happened in the game. That was going to come down to what we did on the field.”
On the field, No. 4 Alabama is coming off an authoritative 59-0 win over Texas A&M, a historic performance Saban and players said exemplifies the team’s potential. Now, the Crimson Tide is faced with the prospect of taking its newfound energy and performance from the friendly confines of Bryant-Denny Stadium to one of the most historically threatening venues in the Southeastern Conference.
“When we see things going south, we need to get things back north and let everyone know that’s not how we’ve been doing things,” quarterback Blake Sims said. “Look at the great things we did last week and how it helped us and keep it going.”
Sims’ progression in his first season as a starting quarterback has been an important cog in the Alabama offensive machine that has churned out over 500 yards in five of seven games this season. The only games below that mark have been on the road, including the Crimson Tide’s loss to Ole Miss. Saturday, Alabama’s 11th-ranked offense will be matched up against one of the most improved defenses in the country. Tennessee is ranked 29th nationally after a season of league-average defense.
“They’re very, very aggressive,” Saban said. “They really play well in the front seven. They’ve got two really good linebackers who are very active. Their front guys play physical on the line of scrimmage, kind of an attacking front. Their secondary has played much, much better and very, very good all year long for them. This is a really good defensive team. Very attacking, very aggressive.”
