It looks Lane Kiffin was right.
Shortly after Alabama's thrilling 26-23 victory over Georgia in the 2018 national championship game, Kiffin made headlines, claiming Tua Tagovailoa, who engineered 13-point second-half comeback, would have left Alabama had he not been given control of the offense in the second half.
“If this second half doesn’t flip like this, and Alabama is moving the ball and doesn’t change (quarterbacks), people that really know what’s going on would tell you that Tua was leaving,” Kiffin said on the Dan Patrick Show. “Because Tua thought that he should be the starting quarterback and had outperformed him in practice and coach never gave him an opportunity.”
Tagovailoa recently confirmed Kiffin's speculation while on a trip back to his home state of Hawaii, where he spoke to a group of middle schoolers.
From HawaiiNewsNow.com:
"I called my dad and asked him if my offer to the University of Southern California was still available," Tagovailoa told the crowd of seventh and eighth graders. "I wanted to leave. I told my dad I wanted to go to a school where I thought it'd be easier for me and wouldn't challenge me so much."
...
"I called my dad and asked him if my offer to the University of Southern California was still available," Tagovailoa told the crowd of seventh and eighth graders. "I wanted to leave. I told my dad I wanted to go to a school where I thought it'd be easier for me and wouldn't challenge me so much."
It never came to that, and though he's not yet been officially named the starter for the Crimson Tide, Tagovailoa enters the 2018 season as one of the favorites to win the Heisman Trophy.
