If you ever wanted a deeper context of Lane Kiffin, there’s a nice excerpt from the book “Lane Being Lane” that details the genesis of the moniker “Joey Freshwater”, as well as his time in Tuscaloosa that lead to his firing the week before the National Championship game with Clemson.

Layla and the kids never made the move to Tuscaloosa, leaving Kiffin to go off the rails, frequenting Tuscaloosa-area bars. On at least one occasion, an Alabama staffer had to go to Innisfree Irish Pub to retrieve a golf cart Kiffin had left there the night before. “[Innisfree co-owner Derick] Purdy would call me and say, your boy Lane’s back in here asking where the hotties are,” says Josh Booty. “‘Can you introduce me to hotties?’” As one friend of Kiffin’s during that time put it, he was afraid Kiffin was going to “drink himself to death.” He was lonely without his family, and he was facing intense pressure working for a man he couldn’t understand. The stress was almost unbearable at times, and he looked for relief around town. With that came guilt and further strain from his family over his actions. “I’ve seen him on the floor crying like a goddamn baby,” the friend described, when Kiffin faced repercussions from mistakes that impacted his family. “And then I’ve seen him doing shit that’s like ‘you got to put your dick back in your pants.’” Layla filed for divorce in March 2016, citing irreconcilable differences. A month before the filing, Kiffin issued a statement to Fox Sports stating the couple had “mutually decided to divorce.”

It was around this time that Kiffin’s most famous nickname debuted: Joey Freshwater.

The story goes that Kiffin, not wanting to say his real name when recognized in local bars, would tell women his name was Joey Freshwater. There are those who were around Tuscaloosa at that time who insist this was a real thing he did. “The Joey Freshwater thing, it got out there for a reason,” says Trevor Hewett, who worked at Innisfree in addition to covering the team. Kiffin wasn’t the first Alabama assistant to enjoy an adult beverage on the town after the game, nor would he be the last, but he wasn’t subtle about it the way others were to avoid Saban’s wrath. “Lane was visible publicly in a time where Alabama coaches were not visible publicly,” Hewett says. “The other coaches just never went out, and Lane was definitely different in that aspect. Lane was going to be in public at times, sometimes at very odd times during the season.”

The more Hewett thought about it, the more impressed he was that it had mostly stayed as scuttlebutt and never morphed into a public scandal. In some ways, he said half-jokingly, it was Kiffin’s biggest accomplishment while at Alabama. “The fact he made it out of Tuscaloosa without anything becoming super public is wild,” he says.

In 2017, radio host Clay Travis asked Kiffin directly about the Joey Freshwater nickname.

Kiffin denied it as only he could.

“I’ve used Jimmy Chestnut but not Joey Freshwater,” he said. “Someone told me Joey Freshwater is the best thing I’ve ever heard, and I said, ‘Well, his friend is Jimmy Chestnut and is just as good.’”

True or not, those rumors hurt his ability to become a head coach again. Multiple Alabama sources insisted that Kiffin’s behavior during his time in Tuscaloosa precluded him from ever succeeding Nick Saban and becoming the Crimson Tide’s head coach. He had upset too many important people, and the stories were too well-known for it to be palatable for those in power. College administrators viewed him as immature and a liability, even if he was having a lot of on-field success as Saban’s offensive coordinator.

Question now is this: Kiffin has obviously shown his mettle as a head coach again, and, despite the off-field nonsense he’s generated this year, if he’s successful at LSU, are the bridges still burned in Tuscaloosa? We all know that the Crimson Tide fanbase is a fickle one, and that a thirst for success makes for some short memories when it comes to getting great again at Alabama.

Granted, the question remains if he can have success at LSU as an SEC head coach if the presidents of the SEC decide to ban them from the league?

At least they’ve hedged their bets on Kalshi to pay the buyout when he jumps to Tuscaloosa.