Lane Kiffin Thankful For Tarmac Experience, Working For Nick Saban

The Ole Miss head coach was a guest on the Dan Patrick Show on Thursday where he reminisced about his firing experience at USC.

The headlines seem to write themselves when discussing Lane Kiffin and the USC Trojans.

USC recently fired Clay Helton and opened up a search for its next football head coach, a position that former head coach Lane Kiffin's name has been tossed around for. Kiffin was the head coach at USC from 2010 to 2013 and is now the head coach at Ole Miss, and he went on the Dan Patrick Show on Thursday where the conversation about USC came up.

Kiffin claimed he was happy in Oxford, and he actually visited the tarmac where he was infamously fired on a recruiting trip to visit Justyn Martin who recently de-committed from California.

READ MORE: Ole Miss Target De-Commits From Cal Following Oxford Visit

Here's the clip of Kiffin on the Dan Patrick Show this morning:

DP asks @Lane_Kiffin about his interest in the #USC gig. And Lane shares a story about being back at the airport tarmac he was fired at, this past weekend.... pic.twitter.com/2LF0KTSblb

— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) September 30, 2021

Although one of the biggest takeaways from the interview is Kiffin seemingly putting to rest rumors about him heading to USC, the end of the clip provides some insight into Kiffin's mindset heading into his team's matchup with Alabama on Saturday. 

"Everything happens for a reason," Kiffin said. "You never would have worked for Nick Saban had that not happened."

Kiffin is never timid when showering praise on the Alabama head football coach, including routinely calling him the "GOAT" or "Greatest of All-Time" on Twitter. Kiffin was hired as Saban's offensive coordinator following his stint at USC that ended on the tarmac, and he later went on to be the head coach at FAU before coming to Oxford last season.

As Kiffin prepares to face his former mentor in Tuscaloosa this weekend, he seems thankful for his time at Alabama, and he perhaps owes some of the credit to where he currently is in his career to the time he spent under Saban as an offensive coordinator.

Kiffin will have a chance to be the first former Saban assistant to knock off the Crimson Tide head coach when he heads to Tuscaloosa this Saturday. Kickoff is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on CBS.

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