What if Kirby Smart lost to a former assistant before Nick Saban?
That’s a possibility this Saturday when the Southeastern Conference’s two football matchups involving top-12 teams – No. 8 Arkansas at No. 2 Georgia and No. 12 Ole Miss at No. 1 Alabama – contain the added elements of Smart and Saban facing former understudies. Saban is 23-0 against head coaches who once worked for him and can get to 25-0 by defeating Lane Kiffin’s Rebels this weekend and prevailing Oct. 9 at Texas A&M, which is guided by Jimbo Fisher.
Only two of Saban’s 23 wins against former assistants have been decided by single digits – the national championship game of the 2017 season and the 2018 SEC title game – with both at the expense of Georgia’s Smart.
“There’s a reason he’s the best in the history of college football,” Kiffin said Wednesday.
Kiffin nearly knocked off Alabama as Tennessee’s coach in 2009, falling 12-10 in Tuscaloosa, and his three seasons as Saban’s offensive coordinator from 2014-16 yielded three consecutive SEC crowns. In his first pairing against Saban as a former Crimson Tide assistant, Kiffin and the Rebels played Alabama to a 42-42 standoff early in the fourth quarter last season in Oxford before the visitors broke free for a 63-48 win.