NEW ORLEANS -- Their marriage was supposed to be so combustible and toxic that many wondered how long it would last.
When Alabama's Nick Saban hired former USC coach Lane Kiffin as his team's offensive coordinator last January, we were left scratching our heads and wondering, "Is Saban really so foolish?"
After all, if anything could disrupt Saban's vaunted "process," it had to be Kiffin, who had a reputation for being divisive and spoiled as he somehow ascended his way up the coaching ladder despite slipping badly on seemingly every step along the way.
Nearly a year later, though, Kiffin's offense is a big reason No. 1 Alabama might be the favorite in the inaugural College Football Playoff. Heading into Thursday night's game against No. 4 Ohio State in the Allstate Sugar Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Alabama is riding its offense, and not its defense, for the first time during the Saban era.
With Kiffin in charge, Alabama's offense has produced at least 600 yards in four games and 500 yards in eight games. The Crimson Tide led the SEC in total offense (490.5) and ranked in the top five in scoring (36.9 points), rushing (209.5 yards) and passing (281 yards).
Along the way, Kiffin and Saban have learned to coexist. Hey, even Oscar Madison and Felix Unger learned to get along every once in a while.
"I think that assumption about us being so different is very fair, but I don't think it's really accurate," Kiffin said Monday. "We may not have the same personality, but we do have a lot of the same beliefs when it comes to coaching."
Kiffin said the groundwork for him joining Saban's staff might have been laid two years ago. The Trojans went 7-6 in his third season in 2012 after they were ranked No. 1 in the preseason, and Kiffin knew he had to get things turned around quickly if he was going to keep his job.
So Kiffin met with Saban during the summer before the 2013 season and picked his brain about coaching and football.
"I spent three, four hours with him -- just a lot of questioning for him about handling situations and different questions that I had for him," Kiffin said.
A couple of months later, USC fired Kiffin after a 3-2 start. USC athletic director Pat Haden unceremoniously dumped him when the team's plane returned to the school's private airport hangar in Los Angeles after a 62-41 loss at Arizona State on Sept. 28, 2013.
Kiffin, who had a 28-15 record in four seasons at USC, was out of work. He admits his phone wasn't ringing much. But then Saban invited him to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to evaluate the Crimson Tide's offense before they played Oklahoma in last season's Sugar Bowl. The Sooners thumped the Tide 45-31, which spawned the hashtag #blamekiffin.
A few weeks later, Saban hired Kiffin to replace former offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier, who left Alabama for Michigan.
"It's very humbling," Kiffin said. "In this profession, it happens all the time. You can be really hot one minute and then the next minute be unemployed. So it's just a reminder that you've always got to keep trying to improve yourself. You've always got to keep growing and never be satisfied where you are, and I think this year has been an example of it."
Alabama's players weren't sure what to think about Kiffin when he was hired. A few of them, such as quarterback Blake Sims and guard Arie Kouandjio, were recruited by Kiffin when he was coaching at Tennessee.
"I was like, 'Wow!' I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd heard so many things about him. I just wasn't sure," offensive tackle Austin Shepherd said. "After I met him, I thought he'd be a good addition. He's a good coach."
At Alabama, Saban has insulated Kiffin from what might have been his biggest detriment at USC -- dealing with the media. The Tide's assistant coaches are permitted to speak to the media one time during the preseason and not again until they're required to do so at bowl games.
"To be able to learn from somebody like him and his process, shoot, I would have done it for free. I would have paid him for it, like most people would."Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin, on working with Nick Saban
"I don't think you miss it," Kiffin said. "I just always took the approach, and it haunted me at times -- especially when you lose, everything gets magnified -- that I was just going to say what was on my mind. And it wasn't going to be coachspeak, and I wasn't going to get up there and say what every coach gets up and says. That's not what you guys want to hear, so I'd answer questions exactly what I was thinking, as if I was having a one-on-one conversation. Sometimes, that comes back to haunt you like it did."
Instead of talking, Kiffin has learned to listen.
"They get along very well," Sims said. "They interact, they communicate very well. They're two great coaches, so they both want to win. So they put their minds together and Coach Saban does a great job doing whatever he has to do, like if he sees something, he lets Coach Kiffin know and Coach Kiffin takes it in very well. He's not cocky. He always tries to be better. He's a very great listener, and that's one thing I learned from him."
Being able to focus on coaching his quarterbacks and calling offensive plays has also been a welcome change, Kiffin said.
"It's been easier to coach offense," Kiffin said. "I think being a head coach for as long as I was, you kind of forget the value of being able to be with your quarterback, to be able to be with your offensive players the entire game. Now I don't even watch a [defensive] play. At the end of the game, I go in and I'm in the locker room with [defensive coordinator] Kirby [Smart]; I've got no idea what we did on defense, any plays that happened, because rarely ever do I even see a play."
Over the past few months, Kiffin has learned that he and Saban really aren't that much different. He even discovered Saban has a sense of humor.
As the Crimson Tide sat in a locker room at Tennessee's Neyland Stadium before beating the Volunteers 34-20 on Oct. 25, Kiffin asked Saban, "Who would have thought, Coach, that one day I was going to go back here working as an assistant for you?"
In January 2010, Kiffin infamously left Tennessee after only one season to return to USC. Tennessee students nearly rioted on campus after he left.
"[Saban] is funnier than you guys think," Kiffin said. "He made a joke one time about how did I get higher on the most-hated list than he did. He might have been mad about that."
When Kiffin was introduced as a finalist for the Broyles Award, which goes to the country's top assistant coach, during a ceremony in Little Rock, Arkansas, earlier this month, he joked about his sideline conversations with Saban during games.
Kiffin even pointed to his waist level to poke fun at Saban's height.
"Hey Lane, I love you so much," Kiffin said. "Thank you so much for coming here. Can you please stop throwing the ball so much and just run it a few more times please?"
"This," Kiffin told the audience, "is why he doesn't let me talk to the media."
Jokes aside, Alabama's players and coaches say Kiffin has been a welcome addition. To Kiffin's credit, he turned Sims, who wasn't even supposed to win the starting job, into one of the Tide's most prolific passers.
"I think it's great to have another opinion, to hear how somebody else has done it," Smart said. "He always gives us ways that he's done it, for good and bad. He gives you new ideas, fresh ideas. He's new energy, fun to be around [and] the kids really like him. I'll say this: He's not afraid to speak his mind.
"Either that, or he hasn't learned yet."
Kiffin says he'll return to Alabama next season, when the Crimson Tide will have to replace Sims, tailback T.J. Yeldon and star receiver Amari Cooper. If Kiffin continues his good work at Alabama, another head-coaching opportunity might come in the future.
If that happens, salvaging Kiffin's career might become one of Saban's most unlikely feats.
"I'm sure I haven't rubbed off on him, and I shouldn't," Kiffin said. "Here's a coach that got fired, unemployed, he brings in [during] one of the best runs in the history of college football. To be able to learn from somebody like him and his process, shoot, I would have done it for free. I would have paid him for it, like most people would."
Saban got the last laugh, though, because Kiffin has succeeded when few other people thought he would.
"What I knew what I was getting was a very, very good coach who does a great job with the players," Saban told reporters earlier this month. "[He] is a great teacher, and he has done exactly what I thought he'd do and what I expected him to do.
"He's a really good playcaller, and he's done a great job for us this year. So I think I got exactly what I expected. I don't think anyone else expected what I expected, to the point I even got criticized for doing it by a lot of people."
No one can criticize him now.