Florida Atlantic introduced its newest head coach Lane Kiffin to the media on Tuesday morning and said he’s focused on where the program is going rather than where it’s been the last three years.

“We really don’t care about what happened before,” Kiffin said, referring to the team’s three straight three-win seasons. “I actually followed my dad’s [Monte Kiffin] advice for once and he told me, ‘Be very careful who you follow and where the program is at. You don’t want to follow someone that made a phenomenal run. You want to go somewhere where they’ve been struggling and they have been down.’”

Kiffin joked he did not follow his dad’s advice initially when he took the head coaching job at the University of Southern California, where he was taking over for Pete Carroll — the current head coach of the Seattle Seahawks — who won two national champions while in charge of the Trojans.

Kiffin went 28-15 at USC before getting fired in his fifth season.

“That was really smart and it worked pretty well,” Kiffin said jokingly.

The former University of Tennessee and Oakland Raiders head coach will take over a program that has finished 3-9 in each of its last three seasons. He is 35-21 as a college head coach and 5-15 in the NFL.

Kiffin said he was excited about where the program is at right now and the task of taking his new players somewhere they haven’t been before.

“This is my fourth head [coaching] job, and I’m sitting in this chair and this is the most excited I’ve been at any job,” he said. “It’s a different place, a different feeling. Building something that’s never been done before versus trying to do what’s already been done. It’s going to be a special run and it’s going to feel different as we’re doing it.”

The new Owls head coach also stressed that he never had a mindset that he was going to be a head coach, but rather one of finding a place that was very committed to winning and going to the next level.

Kiffin also mentioned he would have been back at Alabama if he did not get the job.

After getting fired from USC in the middle of the 2013 season, Kiffin said his phone was not ringing very much at the time as programs weren’t as interested in him as they once were, and it was a very humbling experience going through that process.

“I’m very grateful for [Alabama] coach [Nick] Saban,” Kiffin said. “You start calling a lot of people that don’t call you back all of a sudden and you start to realize things about people. Nick Saban was willing to give me that opportunity and it’s been a wonderful three years. I learned so many things from him about how he run his program and how he is the CEO so I would like to thank him.”

Kiffin made sure to tell Saban that he’s still focused on the upcoming college football playoffs — which Alabama is the top seed in  — that he has to coach in.

“I will be back tonight for the 7:30 a.m. staff meeting tomorrow morning coach,” he said.

Kiffin said despite what people think, he has a great relationship with Saban, but does catch flak from the Alabama coach.

“I get my ass chewings from time to time,” joked Kiffin. “I’ve learned to accept them.”

Athletic Director Pat Chun said the search for a new head coach was relentless, and the goal was to get the best possible coach out there, which he believes FAU accomplished.

“Seventeen days ago, I made a recommendation to [FAU president] Dr. [John] Kelly that we needed to make a change in our football program,” said Chun. “That evening, I spoke to an emotional football team on the heels of a season that fell short of our expectations. I made a one singular promise to them: I will find the best possible coach and present him to them at the appropriate time. Last night, I presented to the team the best coach possible.”

Although he did not give a timetable for how long it will take to turn the program around, Kiffin said it will not be about talk, but all about work.

“For us to do the impossible, we have to see the invisible,” Kiffin said. “You don’t get what you want, you get what you deserve.”

Hans Belot Jr. is a contributing writer with the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected] or tweet him at @Don_Phenom_.