Nick Saban at Alabama had his clear strategy, rules, discipline, and philosophy for players and his staff to follow. But in 2014, when Saban decided to add Lane Kiffin to his staff, he probably didn’t know the ‘troll’ he was bringing to Tuscaloosa. In a 2016 incident, Kiffin recalled that during a team drill, he ran his own offensive drills even when other staff members warned him of Saban’s anger.

In a first-team offense vs first-team defense drill, Kiffin didn’t stick to Saban’s approach. Instead, he called trick plays, reverses, double passes, and the team won big. The former Bama head coach confronted him, and Kiffin even thought at one point that Saban “was going to fight him physically.” Kirby Smart was someone who had seen Kiffin up close, and when asked by reporters about the LSU HC’s troll personality, he agreed, with words of praise for him.

“Yep, that’s him,” Kirby Smart said about whether Lane Kiffin’s personality is that of an internet troll at the SEC Media Days on July 21. “He is very bright. He does an incredible job of evolving with college football. And he was really good at that with us at Alabama, you know; he made Coach Saban uncomfortable. Let’s just say what it is.”

Over the years, Kiffin has embraced that ‘poking fun’ style and uses it to troll people on X regularly. In a recent interview, he even accepted that he is an internet troll, and that’s what Kirby Smart saw long before Twitter conversations dominated college football discourse. Despite that, though, Kiffin was a successful coordinator at Alabama. Even now, Kirby Smart is well aware of the genius that Kiffin is.

“He does a great job; he’s hard to play,” Kirby Smart said about Kiffin’s $91 million LSU move. “I don’t like having to play his teams because I know what he knows and I know how he thinks about defenses, and he knows what he’s doing.” Sadly, though, as Kiffin joins LSU within the SEC, he might still have to face his team. And this time, the expectations and hype will be much higher, given the top quality of the team LSU will have with Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin and Smart served on Bama’s staff together for two seasons. That was probably enough for Smart to know about Kiffin’s ‘troll’ behavior. Take that 2016 incident. Even after Kiffin ran the drill the first day and got a scolding from Saban, he didn’t stop. The second day, Kiffin went with a wholly opposite approach in drills. This time, he deployed basic and old-school routes. The defense dominated. When Saban confronted him again, he had a reply ready.

“I’m just running what I thought you would want me to run against the defense,” Kiffin told the story to ON3. The legendary Bama head coach immediately cleared the room and delivered a private screaming tirade, standing over Kiffin as he was seated. One would think Kiffin would stop his quips at that. Not quite, actually.

During a 2016 game vs Western Kentucky, the whole world saw Lane Kiffin getting a scolding after a costly fumble. The broadcast cameras immediately turned towards a yelling Nick Saban at Kiffin. However, the Bama head coach later clarified, calling the screaming “a– chewings” for Kiffin. Even the now-LSU head coach developed a thick skin for it as he remarked that those a– chewings “were daily” for him.