Lane Kiffin was on on ESPN on Tuesday, and if you’d like to waste 20 minutes listening to the Mississippi coach talking about yoga and self-help books, I’m sure the clip is available somewhere.
If you’re looking for actual information about the Kiffin-induced, three-way SEC showdown that threatens to immolate a trio of fan bases and sabotage the 10–1 Rebels’ season, sorry. There was very little to be gained from this pseudo-interview. Kiffin was asked, in vague terms, about a reported “ultimatum” from Ole Miss to the coach to declare his future intentions before the Egg Bowl rivalry game against Mississippi State on Nov. 28. The deadline was first reported by and subsequently by other outlets.
“That’s absolutely not true,” Kiffin told McAfee. “There hasn’t been anything like that at all.”
Kiffin tossed in the fact that his athletic director, Keith Carter, was at the 6 a.m. yoga sesh as well, as if to indicate that all is tranquil between them. If they can downward dog together, could there really be any tension at Ole Miss?
And Kiffin had his star running back, Kewan Lacy, in his office, pulling him on camera for a couple minutes. What was left off camera: the elephant in the room, which was tearing up the furniture as Kiffin and McAfee bantered about the meaning of life. Or something.
Kiffin wasn’t asked about the major escalation in his situation this week—widespread reports that his family members were flown to both Gainesville, Fla., and Baton Rouge to scope out their potential future. There was a 0.0% chance those trips weren’t going to go public and ignite a firestorm. That is inviting chaos, which seems to be Kiffin’s default setting.
(The Older, Wiser, Zen-Seeking Kiffin storyline makes for nice feature material, though. Namaste, y’all.)
Florida and LSU both are interested in hiring Kiffin, and in the completely ungoverned coaching market of college football, these things can and will happen during the stretch run of the season. Not after.
Everyone in the sport just shrugs at the corrosive effects of an in-season hiring market on teams that are playing for something special. Then many of those same shruggers howl at the moon about the need for “guardrails” on the transfer portal and NIL. It’s quite a double standard that benefits the coaches while vilifying the players.
If there is an ultimatum on Kiffin to either stay or go before Ole Miss is in the College Football Playoff, and if he chooses to leave and not coach the Rebels in pursuit of a national championship, it will be one of the biggest travesties the sport has ever seen.
In a catch-22 situation, LSU and Florida would have to ask themselves why they would want a coach who would bail on his team before a playoff run. Kiffin draws up ball plays about as well as anyone, and he’s an extraordinary recruiter. He’s also spent much of his career looking for the next thing. The jobs at LSU and Florida are great, but what if Alabama or Ohio State or—perhaps more immediately—the NFL comes calling next?
Tennessee assuredly thought it had Kiffin for longer than a year before USC came and swiped him. Florida Atlantic fulfilled its role as an image improvement way station for three years, making Kiffin presentable for power-conference jobs again. That’s where Ole Miss entered the picture, giving him another shot at the SEC.
It’s been a great six-year run, with three straight 10-win seasons serving as the final validation of Kiffin’s coaching chops. But he also had an extended public flirtation with Auburn in 2022, which coincided in an 8–1 Rebels team tanking to 8–5. And it’s long been believed that Kiffin had his eyes on Florida, which trap-doored Billy Napier on Oct. 19.
A tussle between Ole Miss and the Gators was building. Then, lo and behold, LSU whacked Brian Kelly a week later. And suddenly the Kiffin sweepstakes became a triangulated competition.
In the midst of this, the Rebels have kept on winning and are now an Egg Bowl victory over the 5–6 Bulldogs away from locking up their first CFP berth. It’s the best season at Ole Miss since the 1960s, a towering triumph. And yet Kiffin has hijacked the joy ride.
The competing pitches must be something.
LSU offers the best path to a national championship in terms of recency, while presumably passing along assurances that the governor of the state will not unilaterally fire the athletic director and/or the football coach again.
Florida asks whether Kiffin really wants to work in a place as absurd as Louisiana, while glossing over its own absurdity—the school has fired four straight coaches after four years or less, all of them during the season.
Mississippi plays the card, while knowing that its greatest successes predate integration.
While this is playing out, Kiffin deflected questions Saturday about his future plans.
“Today was awesome,” Kiffin said. “And I don’t talk about that stuff and really to even talk about it right now would be so disrespectful to our players and how well they played today.”
A day later, his family was off on a two-stop SEC tour. How’s that for disrespecting the players?
Given the amount of energy coaches put into team bonding—preaching through the winter workouts and the spring practices and the summer drills about how all the work will all pay off when the season arrives—this is hypocrisy of the highest order.
If the ultimatum is real, it’s a high-stakes play by Ole Miss leadership—especially given Kiffin’s role as the offensive play-caller. I emailed questions to the school Tuesday seeking answers to Kiffin’s denial of the deadline, and responses to his family’s travels. I received no response prior to publishing this column.
If Kiffin wants to leave for another job, I get the institutional anger. I get the knee-jerk desire to send him packing immediately. But if he wants to at least see the playoff run through, how do you tell your players that their dreams are less important than your ego after being jilted?
On the other hand: How does Kiffin convince his team leaders that he would stay fully committed to the playoff cause with another job waiting for him? Last time he was in this situation, as the named coach at FAU but offensive coordinator at Alabama in the 2016 season, Nick Saban fired him mid-playoff because he didn’t think Kiffin’s mind was sufficiently on Crimson Tide business.
It’s all a classic, only-in-the-SEC soap opera. And Kiffin might continue talking about yoga and self-help, keeping the entire South guessing and fussing right up until the Egg Bowl. Or beyond.
