Losing family members is always a tough moment; losing your two parents is even more so. This is what happened to Lane Kiffin in a little more than a year. His father, Monte Kiffin, died on July 11, 2024, and his mother, Robin Kiffin, on June 17, 2025.
Lane Kiffin: “Losing both parents in the last year has been very challenging. Thinking on the way over here about my mother and how grateful I am to her. Coaches wives are the glue that holds everything together. Really grateful to my parents..”
— The Rebel Walk (@TheRebelWalk) July 14, 2025
During the SEC media days, Lane Kiffin took some time to praise his parents, especially his mother.
“Losing both parents in the last year has been very challenging. Thinking on the way over here about my mother and how grateful I am to her. Coaches wives are the glue that holds everything together. Really grateful to my parents..” Said Kiffin to the press
Lane Kiffin’s father, Monte Kiffin, was a college and NFL coach for over five decades. In that time, he mentored 16 teams. Moving that much as a kid must have been difficult for a young Lane Kiffin. Understandably, he would see his mother as the rock that made it possible to grow up in that moving environment.
Lane Kiffin’s custom jacket honors his dad 🥹❤️@OleMissFB | @Lane_Kiffin pic.twitter.com/BlSSzT0ItL
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) July 14, 2025
At another moment of the event, he also took some time to honor his father by wearing a special jacket that included pictures of the two of them together.
Talking with the press, he showed the inside of his jacket, with pictures of him and his father.
“My guy Mark, in Oxford, made me this jacket,” Kiffin said. “It’s pictures of my dad and me, and all the different places that he coached. It’s pretty awesome.”
Lane Kiffin on the rumors of Nick Saban returning to coaching
Speaking with the SEC Network during the SEC media days, Lane Kiffin was asked what he thought of the rumors of Nick Saban being interested in returning to coaching.
It seems that for Kiffin, this could be highly likely:
“I did read that [McElroy] said that earlier today, and then they asked me a question and I’m like, ‘Yeah, he’s going to coach again. I don’t know if it’s college or NFL, but he’s gonna coach again.’ So he put that in my head and I repeated it. … But I have thought that,” Kiffin said on the SEC Network desk. “I thought it’d be probably one year in the media then back.”
“And I kind of thought it might be the NFL, just because he’s so sharp still. I just saw something yesterday where he was doing some interview. He’s so sharp and has the process so nailed of how to do it that I almost see it as a waste that he’s not coaching.”
The rumor mill started to turn on Monday, when ESPN’s Greg McElroy stated that a source close to him told him that Saban would be interested in returning to coaching. Saban has been working on College GameDay since stepping down as the coach of Alabama in early 2024.
However, the rumor seems to be substantiated by the fact that the legendary coach wasn’t included on the SEC Network’s (Part of the ESPN family, Saban’s employer) coverage team for the SEC media days. Maybe that signals that Nick Saban is not interested in being an analyst in the long run.
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