Florida Atlantic AD Pat Chun Tells the Story of Hiring Lane Kiffin
Florida Atlantic University made waves last week when the football program hired Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin as its next head coach.
Athletic director Pat Chun joined Inside the Locker Room to discuss the decision and look towards the future of his program under Kiffin.
"We wanted someone that had coaching experience," Chun said. "We wanted someone with expertise on the offensive side of the ball."
After establishing a set of criteria for the new coach and analyzing the data, FAU identified Kiffin as one of the candidates and first visited with him a few days after the SEC Championship Game. Over the next week, Kiffin and school officials had two meetings that lasted about three hours.
"The Lane that I spent time with was extremely humble. You could sense that what happened at USC had a profound impact on him. And I would venture to guess that three years with Coach Saban - and he said the same thing - three years with Coach Saban really kind of gave him a Ph.D in coaching."
FAU officially introduced Kiffin as the school's fourth head coach on December 13. The football program hasn't even existed 20 years, but this won't be the first connection to Alabama. Former Crimson Tide assistant Howard Schnellenberger began the football program in 2001, and Chun hopes history repeats itself.
"Obviously the one thing that has been successful here is the guy who started our program was an offensive coordinator for Bear Bryant so we figured we might as well go back to the well and get the offensive coordinator for Nick Saban and see if that works for FAU again."
You can hear the full conversation with Chun in the video above.