"It’s just so typical of Lane Kiffin to do something so utterly destructive…Lane Kiffin trying to blame others, trying to blame the adult in the room is so comical." – Paul Finebaum
Long post incoming on Lane Kiffin that many of you are sure to hate…
After watching Lane’s exit to LSU, my overriding feeling is that this was a fork in the road and the result was sad.
First a confession, in October I began to believe we were witnessing Lane 3.0 and the arrival of the sport’s next championship coach.
I think this process got away from Lane, and he lost sight of the fact that this is the point. The point of the job is to get into a spot where your team is 11-1 and playing for championships
In the last year, he shared a lot about trying to better himself and the ways in which he found happiness by not being driven by selfishness
The stakes in this business are as large as the salaries. Far be it from me to critique anyone for liking attention, but to truly be a championship coach at this level you have to eat a bowl of shit every now and then. You have to let the public believe a lie or a partial truth sometimes in order to protect your players or assistant coaches.
If you believe the reporting around Kiffin’s exit, then much of the messiness centered around his inability to understand why Ole Miss could never allow him to coach the team through the playoffs and become the head coach at LSU. There are a thousand good reasons why the optics of that would amount to Ole Miss looking inferior, but even in Lane’s interviews today he chose to tell us that Keith Carter “has to live here” and he chose to skirt responsibility for his own actions by citing what Pete Carroll told him to do or what Nick Saban told him to do instead of admitting that to be courted and paid attention to is what Lane Kiffin wanted.
To me, that feels like a cop out. This didn’t just happen to him.
Interviews he game to ESPN earlier this year showed that he had an awareness around the mistakes he made leaving Tennessee and Alabama. He identified his tendency to self sabotage. This time he blew up a situation where he had innovative NIL support at a school who gave him everything he wanted (to the point of making his dog a de facto mascot) and embraced his quirks... While sitting at 11-1 on the verge of the CFP!
The problem is that it will be hard to ever truly take him at face value again. One rocky exit might be bad circumstances, and two might be a coincidence. When you get to the third, the common denominator is clear.
After today, I don’t think there will ever be a truly happy ending for Lane. He may win big at LSU, but at some point those same feelings of discontentment will arise. Instead of becoming an Ole Miss legend who broke paradigms in college football’s new era, he is likely to become a brilliant offensive mercenary with a brash attitude.
There will be a lot more bowls put in front of him in Baton Rouge than there ever were in Oxford. Maybe he will consume them and become the type of organizational leader that can sustainably compete for the sport’s biggest prizes.
Some may no longer take some of Lane’s previous public comments about his personal journey at face value, but I believe he believes them, and I think that is the tragic part. He might understand the lessons from past stops, but it’s hard to look at how all this played out and feel like he applied them.
Whether that makes you see him as detestable or relatable is up to each of you and your own individual experiences.
Something about telling the media that “you have a lot of praying to do before making a decision” and then immediately threatening the livelihoods of your staff around 36 hours does not sit right with me. Intrinsically evil.
Lane Kiffin has done the unthinkable. Taken a head coaching job at a rival school right before his/our first ever playoff berth.
Will forever tarnish his legacy here in Oxford in a career that could have been legendary. This will follow him for the rest of his life.
As the Kiffin drama plays out, and appears to be nearing the end, I cannot help but to be reminded that this year’s Ole Miss team has been playing in honor of Corey Adams.
It’s wild to imagine someone would be willing to walk away from this situation knowing that this team has made program history and that the feat has been done with a bigger cause being championed.
You have to end this tonight.
He’s trolled and gaslit your fans for weeks. And now he’s holding the future of your program hostage.
Meanwhile let’s cut to LSU alum and CAA client Booger McFarland for reaction!