SAN FRANCISCO—Lane Kiffin may once more be on the move.
Formerly a head coach for the Oakland Raiders, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Southern California, Kiffin, currently the offensive coordinator for the University of Alabama, is considered the front-runner to earn the same position with the San Francisco 49ers.
Following nearly a month of the churning rumormill that was the Niners head coaching search, San Francisco has set their sites on one of college football’s most highly-regarded offensive minds.
Though the Indianapolis Colts special assistant Rob Chudzinski has also been connected with the vacancy, Kiffin has emerged as the favorite of head coach Jim Tomsula, who was announced as the team’s replacement for Jim Harbaugh last week.
Kiffin’s coaching career has been colored by controversy, including two mid-season firings and a widely-publicized departure from Tennessee after one lackluster season. However, Kiffin’s most recent season at Alabama is considered a resounding success.
If hired in San Francisco, Kiffin will have once more left an organization he’s publicly asserted he will stay with. When asked in Decmeber if he would stay with Alabama, Kiffin said, “Yes. Definitely. I think that we’ve still got a lot of stuff we can do better. We’ll obviously be working with a new quarterback, and that will be exciting. We’ve done that before. To me, that’s always exciting, the unknown. You’ve got a new quarterback to see if we can do this again, to see if we can perform really well.”
If hired, Kiffin will be responsible for turning-around San Francisco’s currently dormant offense and helping quarterback Colin Kaepernick regain his former dominance.
