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Imagine being Florida football right now, and waiting for Lane Kiffin to decide. Imagine being LSU. Same thing. Imagine being either of those schools — the flagship university of their state, and among the top football programs in college football — and having to wait for Lane Kiffin like a kid on the playground, hoping to be picked for the next game of kickball.
Pick me! Pick me!
Imagine being Ole Miss right now. You’re also waiting for Lane Kiffin, but this is a different kind of waiting, because you’ve already got him. He’s your football coach right now. Congratulations!
Yes, clearly Kiffin wins football games. For whatever reason he seems to be pretty good at coaching college football. Not sure if it’s his Xs and Os or, more likely, his ability to connect with the players. Maybe because he thinks like a teenager himself.
Lane Kiffin is all about Lane Kiffin, in that way a child can be — someone who hasn’t figured out, yet, that the world doesn’t revolve around them. That’s Kiffin, the sun in his solar system, and I’m blaming it on the silver-spoon way he was brought into the coaching business. His father was Monte Kiffin, of course, the longtime, legendary NFL defensive coordinator. With Daddy’s help, Lane Kiffin never had to sweat for a job. All he had to do was ask Daddy.
Here you go, son, two years out of college, with only graduate-assistant positions on your resume at Fresno State and Colorado State, getting hired onto the staff of the Jacksonville Jaguars. An NFL gig, already.
Must be nice to be the son, er the sun, in that solar system. Because a year later he’s on Pete Carroll’s staff at Southern California — Carroll counts Monte Kiffin as a mentor — and now little Lane is off and running, getting jobs and promotions and yes, as we’ve said, he’s apparently pretty good at this coaching thing. For whatever reason he wins more than he loses, and at Ole Miss he has picked up the baton that Hypocrite Freeze, er, Hugh Freeze dropped in 2016.
The 10-1 Rebels are No. 6 in the latest 2025 College Football Playoff rankings, and with only one regular-season game left against a bad Mississippi State team, and almost no shot at reaching the 2025 SEC championship game, Ole Miss is almost assured of hosting a first-round game — a winnable game, against the No. 11 seed, in the 2025 CFP bracket.
Lane Kiffin has Ole Miss on the precipice of history, a legitimate shot at the 2025 national title, which would be the school’s first since 1962.
But he’s considering an offer from Florida. And an offer from LSU. Or he might stay at Ole Miss, which found a modicum of pride last week and gave Kiffin a deadline of Nov. 29, the day after Rebels' Egg Bowl rivalry game against Mississippi State, to make a decision.
One of those three schools will win the Lane Kiffin sweepstakes.
Congratulations?
Why does LSU want Lane Kiffin?
Lane Kiffin has entered Brian Kelly territory, which makes him almost impossible to like — and makes LSU stupid as it can be. Because LSU has been here before, trying to hire the coach of another school even as that school is one of just a handful left with a shot at making the CFP bracket.
That was Notre Dame in late November 2021. The Fighting Irish’s coach was Brian Kelly. Notre Dame was ranked No. 6 in the CFP poll, with a solid shot at being in what was then the four-team CFP field. But LSU came calling anyway. Kelly took the call, and considered leaving Notre Dame on the doorstep of destiny.
What kind of coach — what kind of person — does that? Someone with no loyalty to anyone but himself, no allegiance to anything but his own ego.
LSU won the Brian Kelly sweepstakes in 2021. Congratulations?
Kelly’s gone, not surviving his fourth season in Baton Rouge, for whatever reason. The guy can coach — he’s up there with Lane Kiffin, if not better — but he can’t relate to people at all. He pretends to have a Southern accent when he speaks to the LSU crowd, he shouts at players when they come off the field after making a mistake … he’s impossible to like, unless he’s your coach. And then you like him only because, only if, he’s winning big.
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Brian Kelly had no self-awareness, but then, neither does LSU. This is a school where the governor is calling the shots for the football program, just an embarrassing turn of events for the state, school and football program, but they don’t appear to see it that way. Self-delusion is a powerful drug, and at LSU they’re addicted. This is a school that during the 2022 calendar year employed football coach Brian Kelly, men’s basketball coach Will Wade and women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey.
With a straight face, LSU employed that trio of jerks in the same year!
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Whatever. LSU’s gonna LSU, and right now LSU is trying — for the second time in four years — to hire the coach of another school even as that school has a possible path to the national title. If you’re LSU, you have to ask yourself the question that apparently slipped your mind in 2021:
Do we really want to hire a guy who would leave Ole Miss now?
Why does Florida want Lane Kiffin??
As for Florida, your guess is as good as mine. That’s a school located in the heart of the most talent-rich state in the country, a state that spawned the following (true) statement about recruiting: There’s speed, and there’s Florida speed.
The UF football program, located in Gainesville, was born on third base. You have to try really hard to find the wrong football coach, but by golly the Gators did it in 2002 (Ron Zook), 2011 (Will Muschamp), 2015 (Jim McElwain) and again in 2022 (Billy Napier). And here they are, less than a week away from perhaps doing it again (Lane Kiffin).
Hiring Kiffin is hiring a carpetbagger, someone who (probably) will win big while (definitely) finding occasional ways to embarrass his school, including when he walks to the podium for his introductory news conference and is asked, immediately: How could you leave Ole Miss on the doorstep of destiny?
If you’re Florida (or LSU), how long do you expect him to be loyal to you?
Kiffin, like Kelly before him, has shown he’s the football coaching equivalent of this great observation by Chris Rock on the topic of cheating husbands: Some men are only as faithful as their options.
That’s Kiffin, going forward. He already left Tennessee after one season for the better option at Southern California, and Tennessee was a great program. So is LSU. So is Florida. But what if the best program in America — that would be Alabama — comes calling? Or what if another NFL team tries to make the same mistake as the Raiders in 2007, and comes calling on Kiffin?
Don’t fool yourself. Kiffin would be only as faithful to LSU or Florida as his options.
Ole Miss is finding that out now, as Kiffin plays two SEC schools against his current SEC school, with the game against rival Mississippi State looming and the SEC title game a possibility and the CFP bracket just about a sure thing. Then again, this paean to the nonsense that is SEC football could end up with no movement at all.
Maybe Lane Kiffin stays at Ole Miss.
Hey, Rebels: Congratulations?
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lane Kiffin is only as loyal as his options. LSU and Florida, you've been warned
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / USA TODAY
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