Lane Kiffin has grown up a bit because the final time he obtained himself right into a hostile state of affairs.
The final time he discovered himself in some actual sizzling water as a head coach was again in 2021, and he seemingly relished each second. It was his first season as the top coach of the Ole Miss Rebels, and he had returned to face the Tennessee Volunteers for the primary time as an opponent.
Kiffin infamously skipped city on the Vols for the head-coaching job with the USC Trojans after only one yr on Rocky High, and his return to Neyland Stadium was not a welcome one.
As the sport wound down, Kiffin and his Rebels had been pelted with junk from the stands, and that included a mustard bottle in addition to a golf ball.
Kiffin seemingly liked it.
“They had been chanting like ‘F— Lane Kiffin.’ That truly felt sort of intense and funky,” Kiffin told podcaster Theo Vonn in 2025. “100,000 individuals chanting that … After which the scholar part was like ‘Hey, final evening, we had been together with your spouse.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s fairly humorous to give you these things.’ So it was intense and it stored constructing.”
Lane Kiffin enjoys being the dangerous man
Kiffin seemingly likes to “play the heel,” so his new feedback to ESPN’s Mark Schlabach about leaving Ole Miss for his new job with the LSU Tigers, proper earlier than the Faculty Soccer Playoff, are a bit surprising in that gentle.
Does he remorse his messy exit from Oxford?
“Yeah, I do,” Kiffin told ESPN on Thursday. “However I feel that is factor that I have a look at life that method now, as an alternative of claiming, ‘No, I do not. I used to be proper.’ I have a look at issues all the time now, like, how might I’ve achieved them higher? Nevertheless it’s additionally simpler while you’re additional eliminated. There is not any emotion concerned.”
It isn’t that he left, however slightly, how.
Kiffin led the Rebels to an 11-1 file within the common season, and he apparently spent days preventing with Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter to maintain teaching the staff within the Faculty Soccer Playoff regardless of publicly having accepted the place at LSU.
Reasonably than make it messy and sophisticated, Kiffin needs he had a clear break.
“I want I might have gone in after I met with Keith and stated, ‘I’ve made the choice to go,'” Kiffin defined. “I want I might have simply stated, ‘Hey, I might like to educate the staff,’ and he’d say, ‘No.’ And I might say, ‘Hey, OK, I respect it.’ [I wish I’d] transfer on [and] by no means even mentioned it once more.”
Pete Golding and Lane Kiffin disagree on one factor
Kiffin additionally turned up the temperature between the 2 events by not letting the entire assistants who selected to affix him at LSU coach Ole Miss within the CFP.
Talking of assistants, defensive coordinator Pete Golding was promoted to full-time head coach and he led the Rebels to the semifinals, the place they in the end misplaced to the Miami Hurricanes.
Golding told ESPN that he has no “ill will” towards Kiffin, although he did not agree with how Kiffin dealt with the employees in the course of the transition from Ole Miss to LSU.
“I do not anticipate Pete Golding to agree with every thing I do, nor would I agree with every thing he stated in press conferences throughout that transition,” Kiffin stated. “That is not going to occur. It isn’t my job to do what he needs. It isn’t his job to do what I need.”
So sure, Kiffin modified. However some issues by no means change.
