Lane Kiffin wants to stay with Alabama through the playoffs; possibly 2017

quote:

---

ATLANTA — Lane Kiffin paused before he walked off the turf Saturday night. Looking left, he sauntered toward the crowd and tossed his white Alabama visor to a young boy in the front row.

As he turned to step into the tunnel, another young fan yelled, “Don’t leave!”

If recent reports are true, Kiffin is scheduled for a head-coaching interview at Houston next week, and he might be considering a coordinator job in Baton Rouge as well.

“Our players joke about it. ‘Hey, it’s our last game together,’ ” Kiffin said after a 54-16 win over Florida in the SEC Championship Game. “We’ve got really loose, nice kids. … We just have a lot of fun. We don’t really talk about it seriously like that.”

Friday, head coach Nick Saban said Kiffin, who flamed out at USC and with the NFL’s Oakland Raiders — and left his Tennessee gig after one season — was ready to be a head coach again.

But Kiffin brushed aside related questions after the win.

“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “I want to keep winning these next two games. It’d be really special to do.”

Would he consider returning to the Crimson Tide in 2017?

“Yeah, sure do,” he said. “I’m happy to be here. Coach and I talked about it this week. What a great experience it’s been. All the different quarterbacks. Building it together. And we’ll keep going from here.”

Last year, defensive coordinator Kirby Smart accepted the head coaching job at Georgia after the SEC title game but stayed on Nick Saban’s staff through mid-January. Saban firmly believes that assistant coaches should stay on through the end of the season, and Kiffin was asked if he’ll oblige.

“Yeah,” he said, with a laugh. “If they’ll have me. You can ask coach that.”

---