Vanity Fair published an excerpt from a new Lane Kiffin book by John Talty, the former SEC Insider and senior sports editor for Alabama Media Group who now covers college sports nationally for CBS Sports and 247Sports.

Talty is also the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of “The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban,” and his new book turns on the three seasons Kiffin spent in Tuscaloosa as Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator beginning in 2014.

“Lane Being Lane: The Story of Lane Kiffin, College Football’s Agent of Chaos” covers Kiffin’s entire career, but the Alabama years are where the excerpt lives.

Kiffin was drinking heavily and heading toward divorce during his time in Tuscaloosa, and his wife, Layla, never moved to Alabama with their children. The couple divorced in 2016, Kiffin’s final full season on staff.

Talty writes that the separation left Kiffin unsupervised in a college town:

“Layla and the kids never made the move to Tuscaloosa, leaving Kiffin to go off the rails, frequenting Tuscaloosa-area bars,” Talty wrote.

“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, a former Alabama staffer.

“‘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 most explosive passage comes when Talty quotes a coach recounting what Saban told him about keeping Kiffin in line.

“You’ve got to keep Lane away from the girls that are in college,” Saban said, according to the book. “Just keep him away from the sorority girls. Make sure they’ve graduated college or are working a job.”

Terry Saban, Nick’s wife, is how it got to him. Talty writes that she heard through friends that Kiffin — then living apart from Layla and the children, who were in California — was out on the town trying to pick up women.

The excerpt also revisits the alleged “Joey Freshwater” alias the now-LSU head coach was rumored to use with women in Tuscaloosa.

One caveat worth stating plainly: this is the second Talty book to produce a Saban quote about Kiffin.

His 2024 book with Armen Keteyian, “The Price,” recounted a Saban phone call about Kiffin that Saban flatly denied on the Pat McAfee Show. Kiffin called the episode a “shame” at the time.

Talty’s larger point is the one that should sting in Tuscaloosa: he writes that Kiffin’s conduct during those years damaged his standing with powerful people at the University and inside the football program, and cost him any real shot at succeeding Saban when Saban finally retired.

Instead, Kiffin is in Baton Rouge after the most dramatic coaching search the sport has seen. He is sober and reconciled with Layla — and still in the headlines every week.

Alabama fans will be watching, and plenty of them will be rooting for it to go badly.

Talty’s book can be purchased on Amazon or in bookstores across the country.