Nick Saban has perfect fix for college football to avoid the Lane Kiffin coaching circus with LSU, Florida, and Ole Miss
Former Alabama coach Nick Saban has a perfect fix for college football to avoid the current Lane Kiffin coaching circus with LSU and Ole Miss
Former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban has the perfect fix to avoid another Lane Kiffin-like coaching circus like the one college football is currently experiencing.
Kiffin, in his sixth season as Ole Miss’s head coach, has the Rebels in position to make a College Football Playoff run. LSU and Florida are heavily pursuing him for their head coach openings.
It’s a chaotic situation because Ole Miss hasn’t finished its season yet, the early signing period starts on Dec. 3, and the transfer portal opens in early January. Additionally, the College Football Playoff doesn’t start until Dec. 19 (the championship game is scheduled for Jan. 19).
Kiffin is expected to make a decision next weekend after the Egg Bowl. If he leaves Ole Miss before the playoff, it’s possible the College Football Playoff committee could penalize the Rebels.
Nick Saban has the perfect fix for college football to avoid another Lane Kiffin coaching circus
During ESPN’s College GameDay on Saturday morning, Nick Saban offered the perfect fix to avoid a Kiffin-like scenario in the future.
And it’s actually the exact fix that I laid out nearly a year ago, but my name isn’t Saban, so it didn’t hit quite the same, which is fair.
Saban first pointed out that more consideration should be given to what’s best for the players. I think that’s important to note. It feels like the main focus of the sport in recent years has been on arguing about College Football Playoff rankings, coaching changes, and resumés instead of the players.
The legendary former Alabama head coach also suggested that the transfer window should be pushed back to May.
“Everybody should be thinking about the players,” said Saban. “Everybody should be thinking about the student athletes. What’s best for the student athletes? Players should be able to play for their coach for the entire season. Players shouldn’t be penalized if a coach leaves — because the committee has the opportunity, if a player or coach doesn’t participate, they can sink you in the rankings. So Ole Miss could go down in the rankings and maybe miss a home game (if Kiffin leaves before the final playoff rankings). So their players are getting penalized.
“But we need to take a better approach to the business aspect of what we do in college athletics. In the NFL, you cannot leave your team until you’re finished playing. You can’t talk to another coach in the regular season. There’s a defined time when you can talk to them if they’re in the playoffs. That’s the way it should be. And we should match the academic calendar with the football calendar. And we shouldn’t have an early signing date that conflicts with people wanting to hire an early coach, or a portal situation where you’ve got to hire an early coach or fire your coach early. None of this is fair to the players. So if we did all of that in May and then had some kind of OTAs or something in the summertime instead of spring practice, we wouldn’t have all these issues, and players could actually finish the year.”
“So this is not a Lane Kiffin conundrum,” added Saban. “This is a college football conundrum [where] we need some leadership to step up and change the rules on how this gets done in terms of coaching searches and opportunities for people to leave.”
That’s the perfect fix, and I’ve thought that for a while. It just makes sense, and it would allow time for sound decisions (by players and coaches) to be made, instead of rushed decisions in December and early January in the midst of the most chaotic month in the sport.
It would also probably slow down the high transfer rate (which isn’t good for player development in most cases). Moving the transfer window back to May would make the transfer portal less viable as a plug-and-play roster-building tool. It would still be crazy, but it would improve the process for evaluations, visits, and decision-making.
Something else this fix would potentially do is bring back two-sport athletes in college athletics — specifically in baseball and football. Eliminating spring practice would allow football players to play baseball in the spring.
It’s a near-perfect solution from Saban. The only problem is getting all of the decision-makers in college football to agree on it. And that, of course, is much easier said than done.
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