Dan Lanning jokes that Lane Kiffin 'became privy' to getting yelled at by Nick Saban

During his stint as a graduate assistant coach at Alabama working for Nick Saban, current Oregon head coach Dan Lanning saw and learned plenty. And he developed an appreciation for the way then-offensive coordinator and current Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin could let Saban’s tirades roll off his back.

Kiffin was famed for being on the receiving end of Saban’s “ass chewings” while running the offensive ship in Tuscaloosa. And Lanning recently revealed during an interview on “Bussin’ with the Boys” that the extent of Kiffin getting dressed down went beyond the sidelines.

“I’ll say this: I’ve seen Lane and he can take an ass chewing,” Lanning said. “And I’ve seen that happen before, multiple times. Something he became privy to there at Alabama. But he was able to dust it off pretty well, it never really affected him.”

Lanning demurred on delving into any specific stories about Kiffin during their shared time at Alabama, though.

Lanning got on the receiving end of a Saban tirade or two, himself

In this particular instance, when he drew the ire of the Crimson Tide headman, Lanning found himself in the crosshairs thanks to Paul Finebaum’s appearance at an Alabama football youth camp.

“So I was in the outfield, [and] I was a GA. But remember, we ran a kids camp, and we must have been working like 7-8-year-old kids, right? He ran kids camp like we’re running Alabama fall training camp,” Lanning said. “And I get there kind of late, and I’m kind of just learning the process; I’m a little bit of a fly on the wall. One of our strength coaches is running bag drills, and he leaves; he leaves the bag drills; he’s got to go work out our guys. So I just started doing bag drills like I did at Park Hill South or like I did at Sam Houston State. And I was not doing bag drills right.”

“Coach Saban came over, and it happened to be a day that Paul Finebaum was falling around, and he laid into me. He let me know what bag drills were supposed to look like. You know, it was a great example of how everything mattered to him. It didn’t matter we were coaching 8-year-olds; it mattered you were doing the drill right. So, I stayed up that night and watched every drill to make sure I had them mastered, just in case I got thrown in the fire.”

At that time, the timing couldn’t have been any worse for Lanning. He was not the original individual overseeing the drill, nor was he fully familiar with Saban’s methods. Couple that with the seemingly relaxed environment of it being a youth football camp for seven and eight-year-olds and the presence of Finebaum, and you have the perfect recipe for a Saban chewing out.