Here’s how close Ed Orgeron came to hiring Lane Kiffin at LSU

The last college football coaching carousel settled with Ed Orgeron as the head coach at LSU and Lane Kiffin the boss at Florida Atlantic. Orgeron nearly missed out on the LSU job before that. And after Orgeron did get the job, Kiffin nearly joined him at LSU.

When Orgeron was still just the Tigers’ interim head coach, he made Kiffin a part of his plans in the event LSU kept him on permanently. Kiffin was in his third year as the offensive coordinator at Alabama, and he was considered for the Houston head job.

Here is Orgeron with SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey, explaining how close Kiffin was to winding up as LSU’s offensive coordinator.

Kiffin was definitely coming to LSU from Alabama to be the Tigers’ offensive coordinator, per multiple, multiple sources. And per Orgeron, who’d included Kiffin’s name as OC on a projected coaching staff during his interview.

“I know probably — and I can’t blame them — I know that Alabama probably didn’t want him to come here,” Orgeron says. “I’m assuming they did everything they could to get him a head job. But he was honest with us. He said, ‘Coach, I’m coming to LSU unless I get a head job, and I want a head job.’

“We thought he had the Houston job. He woulda been dynamite there. Dynamite. Then we hear about Florida Atlantic, and we didn’t think he’d take that. But he calls and says, ‘Hey man, I’m coming. I’ve got one more meeting, and I’m just going to listen to them.’ Ended up, he took the job.”

Meaning: If FAU hadn’t moved in to hire Kiffin as head coach, he would’ve transitioned from one side of the Bama-LSU rivalry to another. Nick Saban is likely glad he didn’t.

Things worked out for Orgeron, who got the job and hired away Pitt offensive coordinator Matt Canada, one of the year’s rising coaching stars. Canada looks to be just what LSU needed.

Orgeron told Godfrey:

The day we got him here, we knew Notre Dame, UCLA, Tennessee was all after him. That’s not all of them. These schools were just dying to get him. So we had to move. And the guy was wanted, so we had to make the right offer.

Coaching what-ifs are fun.

FAU’s hiring of Kiffin meant LSU didn’t get him, which spurred the Tigers to hire Canada. That meant Pitt didn’t get to keep Canada, and it also means none of those schools Orgeron mentions — Notre Dame, UCLA, Tennessee — got him either.

We’ll never know how some of those programs would look now, and over the next few years, if Kiffin had gone to Baton Rouge.