Pete Golding Details His Departure and Compares Lane Kiffin to Nick Saban

The Ole Miss defensive coordinator discussed his reasons for leaving Alabama and complimented both his former and current bosses.
Pete Golding Details His Departure and Compares Lane Kiffin to Nick Saban
Pete Golding Details His Departure and Compares Lane Kiffin to Nick Saban /
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Former Alabama and current Ole Miss defensive coordinator Pete Golding met with the media on Friday for the first time since taking his new position on Lane Kiffin's staff. Golding spent time explaining his choice to leave Tuscaloosa for Oxford and even compared his new boss to his former boss saying they shared many similarities.

For Golding, the decision to take a new job this past offseason came down to family.

“I think you get so locked into a career and you get focused on the next step,” Golding said Friday. “When you’re married and you got three kids, sometimes you lose the value of what you’re really about. Having won national championships and a lot of SEC championships and all of that, I still wanted to go somewhere my family could be more involved.

“When you can go somewhere that’s already had success, that I think is very close to being elite year-in and year-out, and feel like you can have an impact and you can help that, especially on your side of the ball, while still being somewhere that your wife wants to be, and still do what you love to do, I think that’s special.”

Alabama head coach Nick Saban gave the media his two-cents on the change during SEC Media Days this past July.

“Look, everybody needs to make their personal choices and decisions about where they think can best develop their career,” Saban said at SEC Media Days. “Pete did a great job for us. I like Pete. He improved every year with us in terms of how he did his job, which I was always pleased with. He chose for personal reasons, or whatever reasons, that it was a better opportunity to go someplace else. That’s his prerogative, and we wish him well.”

What do Golding's two most recent superiors have in common?

“A lot to be honest with you, especially in the meeting format,” Golding said. “Obviously, they are both super intelligent. They both demand discipline in the program in different ways, but they still demand it."

Discipline may not be the first word fans think of when describing Kiffin, however Golding said they both learned from Saban and Alabama and that's permeated through the Ole Miss program.

“I think coach Kiffin does a really good job of putting his own personality on the program, and still not getting away from the culture and the foundation, the discipline, the toughness and all those things that you need for a winning program, but still having his own personality to do it. I think he and I both learned a lot from (Alabama).”

See Also:

What Nick Saban, Alabama Players Want to See in First Fall Scrimmage

Scenes from Alabama Football's Friday Practice

Saturday Scrimmage Preview on The Joe Gaither Show | Episode 58: Aug. 11, 2023


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Joe Gaither
JOE GAITHER

My name is Joe Gaither and I graduated from the University of Alabama in 2018. I began my sports media career in radio in 2019, working for three years in Tuscaloosa covering the University of Alabama and other local high school sports. In 2023 I began my career with On SI writing and covering predominantly college athletics with a focus on the University of Alabama, University of Missouri and Vanderbilt.