Bama’s lame-duck Playoff coordinators are now annual tradition

Some transitions have gone better than others. Mike Locksley is the latest to go through it.

The Alabama Crimson Tide are once again be in the College Football Playoff in 2018, and like clockwork, another coordinator is on his way out during the Tide’s postseason run. Offensive coordinator Mike Locksley has accepted the head coaching job at Maryland, and he’s splitting time between the programs before heading to College Park permanently.

This has become a Bama postseason tradition of sorts. For the fourth year in a row, the Tide are going through the Playoff with a lame-duck coordinator who already has another job. Here’s the budding history of how those coaching changes have gone.

Kirby Smart, 2015

Smart was in his eighth season with the Tide, making him a longer-tenured assistant than the other coaches who will appear on this list. In early December just days after Alabama defeated Florida in the SEC Championship, Georgia announced Smart as its Mark Richt replacement. Even still, Smart stayed on with Alabama through its postseason run, finishing his duties when Bama defeated Clemson 45-40 in the national championship game.

“One day at a time, brother. One day at a time,” Smart said at the time about doing two jobs at once. “There’s light through the tunnel, I keep telling myself. But at the end of the day, it was the right thing to do. I wanted to do the right thing by both employers. I wanted to do the right thing for the kids. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. To not coach in this game, I couldn’t even imagine. It’s a no-brainer.”

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In a way, Smart set the tone by showing that it really is possible to do two jobs at once. Deshaun Watson’s Clemson put up a bunch points on his defense, but Bama won anyway.

Jeremy Pruitt followed Smart as defensive coordinator. More on him later.

Lane Kiffin, 2016

This wasn’t as smooth as Smart’s exit. In December, Kiffin, Bama’s offensive coordinator, took the head coaching job at FAU. The plan was for him to coach through the Playoff before heading full-time to Boca Raton. But things changed after Bama’s clunky 24-7 semifinal victory over Washington. By Monday, Bama announced Kiffin was out. It was the fourth-straight job he’d left in weirdly dramatic fashion, reportedly after being pushed out.

As for what exactly happened, well, here’s Kiffin’s side of things, from his appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show:

“Coach and I had spent some time together last night as we were at the office game planning in Atlanta, and then again this morning, and just kind of bouncing some things around and trying to do both jobs, I thought it would be easier than it was. But as I looked at it I kind of thought, you know I re-watched the game a couple times last night and I was kind of thinking, ‘I don’t think we played great.’

“Now, those games happen, we still did some good things well, we ran the ball well, didn’t turn the ball over, and called the game very conservative because our defense was playing so good. So, it wasn’t anything so much about the game, I was just wondering ‘was I always there?’ Because, you are balancing two jobs, you are interviewing guys at night, and calling recruits at night, and I just kind of, I was just talking to coach.

“I had seen Kirby [Smart] go through it, he had a month to prepare, doing both things. Now, we have a little over a week for this game, and coach and I were just kind of bouncing it around, and just felt that really I don’t know that for the players that you can do 100%percent. You try, but your mind’s thinking ‘OK, I got an interview this guy later, or here’s a list of recruits you have at night’ vs. watching extra films for the opponents.”

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Saban’s side of thing was, well, a little less descriptive:

“We made the decision because it was in the best interest of our players, our program and for Lane for him to assume his duties at Florida Atlantic,” Saban said, via ESPN. “We mutually agreed that this was best for both programs.”

Steve Sarkisian, who’d been serving as an offensive analyst for the Tide, called the plays as OC for the national title game against Clemson. He weirdly went away from the run game when Bama had a lead in the second half. Alabama lost 35-31, and Sark ended up taking a job with the Atlanta Falcons a month later.

A defining moment: Kiffin’s final days with the Tide included the team bus leaving him behind at the Playoff for the second year in a row.

Jeremy Pruitt, 2017

This one wasn’t as dramatic as the whole Kiffin saga, but Pruitt accepted the Tennessee head coaching job in December. Like Smart, Pruitt continued to coach the Tide while starting things up at Tennessee. It was a little trickier for Pruitt, though, because he had to navigate college football’s first-ever Early Signing Period that same month.

But Pruitt coached Alabama’s defense to a national title, and Tennessee finished with a top-25 class despite much upheaval at the end of Butch Jones’ tenure.

Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images

Coaching at two places is hard, but Bama seems to have a system in place.

With one Kiffin-sized exception, the transitions have tended to be smooth.