Ole Miss fans and officials had a visceral reaction to the departure of Lane Kiffin. It was understandable but also naive. What did they think when they hired this guy — that it would end well?
His reputation preceded him. He all but showed up in Oxford with a name tag that said “Buyer Beware.” One way or another, he has left a trail of bad feelings behind everywhere he’s coached. This was never going to end differently.
There’s the old story about the farmer who rescued a frozen snake from the river and later the snake bit him. How could the snake do this to a man who had rescued and cared for him?
Because he’s a snake.
Ole Miss fans gathered on the tarmac at the local airport to boo and curse Kiffin as he walked from a car to a private jet that would take him away to his new employer at LSU for his 30 pieces. Ole Miss had thrown Kiffin a lifeline, pulling him back into big-time football after he had burned so many bridges in the past.
How could he do this to the Rebels?
There’s not much loyalty left in college football, especially when it involves a $4 million raise, but it’s not gone completely.
Kiffin’s ugly departure — his betrayal, as Ole Miss fans would call it (and Tennessee fans before them) — stood in sharp contrast to what happened almost simultaneously in Provo.
Penn State officials flew to Provo to woo BYU coach Kalani Sitake for their head coaching position. Like LSU, Penn State is a traditional football power, a football blue blood and one that could pay whatever it takes. The school presented him with a chance to compete at the highest level of the sport.
Anyone who knows Sitake knew he wasn’t leaving. Not even a more realistic chance to compete for national titles would be enough to entice him to leave.
Sitake is not Urban Meyer or Nick Saban and most certainly not Kiffin — he’s driven to succeed but national championships are not his raison d’etre. If he never wins a national title, he won’t lose any sleep over it. He’s immersed in the BYU culture. He’s all-in.
In the end, he decided to stay, and it didn’t hurt that it likely came with a big pay bump. He is a beloved figure in BYU circles, and not just because he wins games like nobody since LaVell Edwards.
Kiffin has never had that kind of connection. He’s conducted a scorched-earth campaign through college football. He’s had more bad breakups than the Kardashians.
He was the boy wonder when he began. He was named USC’s offensive coordinator at 29 and an NFL head coach at 31. He lasted a little more than one year before he was fired by Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis. They feuded publicly in the media. Kiffin filed a grievance claiming he was fired without cause; an arbitrator ruled to the contrary.
He landed next at Tennessee, at 33 the youngest Division I coach in America. He had barely finished his first season (with a 7-5 record) when he took the head coaching job at USC in the middle of the recruiting season.
This sat well with no one at Tennessee. Mike Hamilton, the athletic director at the time, called it “unethical” and accused Kiffin of telling recruits not to enroll at Tennessee. Students rioted, by the hundreds, starting fires and requiring the help of the fire and police departments.
Kiffin incited more of the same at USC. Fans were booing him and calling for his job after a little more than three seasons. He was fired at the airport, having lost seven of his last 11 games.
Nick Saban hired him as offensive coordinator at Alabama. He lasted three seasons. The team was preparing for the College Football Playoff when Kiffin became the head coach at Florida Atlantic, a mid-tier program. He wanted to continue to coach Alabama in the playoff, but eventually Saban sent him packing when he determined that Kiffin was too focused on his next employer.
He lasted three seasons at FAU and then he was hired by Ole Miss, where his teams produced a 55-19 record and finished in the top 15 three times (and will likely add a fourth season in January’s final poll.) The Rebels are No. 6 and headed for a spot in the CFP, but it was all spoiled when it was learned that Kiffin was flirting with SEC rival LSU.
As has become the norm where Kiffin is involved, it was an acrimonious breakup. When he requested to continue to coach Ole Miss in the playoffs, he claimed that athletic director Keith Carter turned him down “despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance.”
At least three Ole Miss players, referring to their last team meeting with the coach, took to X to deny that this occurred. Ole Miss linebacker Suntarine Perkins posted, “That was not the message you said in the meeting room. Everybody that was in there can vouch on this.”
So Kiffin has already undertaken his sixth head coaching job in 19 years, landing at a school that is now paying three head coaches — Kiffin’s $91 million, former coach Brian Kelly’s $54 buyout and the final $426,000 of former coach Ed Orgeron’s $17.1 million buyout. That’s three coaches in nine years.
Kiffin is the next man up. Who thinks this will end well? Message to LSU: buyer beware.
