Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw
For a couple of weeks now, Ole Miss head football coach Lane Kiffin’s name has been right where he wants it — on the lips of every media member in the country.
This phenomenon started when LSU fired Brian Kelly. Well, ok, I should say it started this time when LSU fired Brian Kelly. This is a regular occurrence and happens every few years when the wind blows from a certain direction and the mood strikes just right.
Lane Kiffin is the son of Monte Kiffin, who was one of the best defensive minds in football for decades.
Monte died in July of 2024.
Ironically, his son is considered a great offensive mind.
I would say he’s one of the best recruiters in college football. I’d say he’s a very convincing speaker. I’d say he’s someone who people are mesmerized by and find themselves following everywhere he goes.
He’s like the pied piper, in a way.
Kiffin started coaching in 1997 when he became an assistant coach at Fresno State. He was there for two seasons.
In 1999, he was a grad assistant at Colorado State.
In 2000, he was an assistant coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
For the next six seasons, he was an assistant coach at USC. During that time, he held four different positions on the offensive coaching staff.
In January of 2007, at age 31, Al Davis hired Kiffin to be the head coach of the Oakland Raiders.
Oakland went 4-12 in its first season, and reports circulated that Davis was already done with Kiffin.
He did, in fact, fire him in September of 2008—during the first month of the season.
He went to the University of Tennessee to be their head coach in 2009, and that gig lasted 13 games. Tennessee went 7-5 that season, then lost the Chick-fil-A Bowl to Virginia Tech 37-14.
Shortly after the season ended, Pete Carroll announced that he was leaving USC and Kiffin bolted for Los Angeles. He took over the program under the assumption that the penalties coming from the Reggie Bush infractions would be light.
They were not.
Kiffin coached for three full seasons at USC and then started the 2013 season 3-2. The Trojans lost at Arizona state 62-41 in late September, and Athletic Director Pat Hayden met the team at the airport in the middle of the night and fired him on the spot.
He was an assistant coach at Alabama for three years before accepting the head coaching position at Florida Atlantic. He announced that he was staying with the Tide to coach in the postseason, but Nick Saban replaced him immediately.
Remember that moment.
At FAU, he won 11 games in two of his three seasons, but no one believed he would be there for very long, and he was on to the next big thing.
And the next big thing was becoming the head coach at Ole Miss.
He’s had six really good years there, and this one was his best. The Rebels are 11-1 and are going to be in the College Football Playoff.
Then that darned wind started blowing again.
Kelly got fired on October 27, and Kiffin’s name instantly came up in all the conversations on who should replace him.
The problem is, Kiffin had a job already. He was coaching a team that was ranked in the top 10 and had playoff aspirations.
Didn’t matter to him.
In an interview Sunday after his decision to leave Ole Miss and take the LSU job became public, he talked with an ESPN reporter, and that tells you everything you need to know about who he is and what he is all about.
“We went through a lot with Keith Carter (Ole Miss AD) trying to figure out a way to make this playoff run work and be able to coach the team,” Kiffin said, “but at the end of the day, that’s his decision and I totally respect that.”
In other words, he wanted to coach Ole Miss through the playoffs this season AND still accept the LSU job.
In what kind of world does college football live in that would allow a coach to take a job while already being under contract, while the current season is still going on?
The NCAA should step in and do something!
Oh, wait, the conferences rule college football now, don’t they? The NCAA has no power whatsoever to stop this.
And this is the way they wanted it.
Kiffin is like the young guy who’s had a lot of girlfriends, but every girl in town believes she can’t live without him. Meanwhile, all his previous girls are glad he’s out of their lives.
It will happen to LSU, too, and Kiffin will move on to a new place and make promises he will never be around to keep.
