- Lane Kiffin has found significant personal and professional success at Ole Miss, a stark contrast to his tumultuous past coaching jobs.
- Kiffin has become the first coach in Ole Miss history to achieve three consecutive seasons with ten or more wins.
- Despite speculation about him leaving for a higher-profile job like Florida, Kiffin has expressed contentment and love for his current role.
He got fired on an airport tarmac at one job. Burned in effigy at another.
Had a masterful megalomaniac ― I say that lovingly, Nick — constantly in his ear at another, and an unhinged owner forcing a mess of a No. 1 overall pick at still another job.
Yeah, why would Lane Kiffin stay at Ole Miss, where his life — on and off the field — has dramatically changed for the good? Where he has, admittedly, grown as a human and coach in untold and unseen ways.
Where Ole Miss is not only the outlier of his tumultuous coaching career, but the only thing that has been good and fulfilling.
“I love what we’re doing here,” Kiffin said last weekend after the Rebels beat Florida, and he became the first coach in school history with three straight double-digit win seasons.
He then said the appropriate thing to protect all parties involved in this ongoing game of will-he-or-won’t-he with Florida or LSU or anyone else, and finished by stating, again, “Doing really well, and I love it here.”
Look, I don’t know if Kiffin will stay at Ole Miss or leave for Florida. Frankly, I don’t think he knows.
But I do know this: leaving Ole Miss would mean walking away from a place where he has learned to let go of demons off the field, and the need to control everything on it. His family is together again in Oxford, he’s at the top of the coaching profession and has proven he can win big at a place with limited success in the modern era of the game.
He has never been more content with where he is, and who he is. What makes anyone think it’s an easy decision to walk away from that known peace of mind, and get thrown into the unknown meatgrinder of being the fifth coach in 16 seasons at a place that expects national titles?
To go from a place where nearly everything is a series of firsts, to a place where first is expected. He has been down that road, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Picking fights with Urban Meyer and Steve Spurrier. Running afoul of the NCAA law with six rules violations in 14 months at Tennessee, before racing out of town for his dream job at USC.
Walking into that dream job and being shackled with 30 scholarship losses in three years, but expected to pick up right where Pete Carroll left off. Failing and being forced into exile, before Nick Saban gave him a lifeline, and he gave Alabama the offensive blueprint to win a few more national titles.
Getting the FAU job — because no one else would hire him with his track record — and getting told to leave by Saban before the national championship game(!!), because Kiffin was recruiting players and coaches for FAU while preparing for Clemson.
Fast forward a decade, and Kiffin, 50, is a completely different person. He says he hasn’t had a drink in five years, and he’s publicly persistent about his faith and its impact on his life.
He’s a daily work in progress, and wants everyone to know it. Live life to the fullest, and live in the moment.
Late last week, he posted on X from The Pivot Year, a spiritual and faith-based book of daily reflections.
You were never meant to control other people’s emotional experiences and perceptions. You were meant to find integrity within yourself. To find your own peace.
Is Florida a better job than Ole Miss? Of course it is — if you’re strictly looking at it from a perspective of best opportunity to win big. It’s easier to build a national championship roster, and sustain it.
But at what price?
If Kiffin leaves for Florida, he will be expected to win the national title on Day 1. The roster is loaded with elite players, more than 50 former blue-chip recruits that fired coach Billy Napier couldn’t effectively mold into a championship contender.
Napier built the roster organically through high school recruiting, and supplementing from the transfer portal. It’s the dream scenario for all coaches, and why Ohio State and Georgia and Alabama (under Saban) have been consistently at the top of the sport.
Kiffin has been doing it at Ole Miss the hard way, recruiting the transfer portal like no one else, and plucking blue-chip high school recruits where he can get them — and with a whole lot of elite coaching support from a wildly underrated staff (including OC Charlie Weis Jr. and DC Pete Golding).
Yet Florida rolled into Oxford last weekend, with a clearly overmatched interim coach and with numerous missing starters — including its top three receivers — and still could’ve won the game. At the end of the day, players win championships.
Just like players win championships at Tennessee, USC and Alabama, and in the NFL. Who says it can’t be done at Ole Miss?
Kiffin’s current team needs an Egg Bowl win over bitter rival Mississippi State to secure the first 11-win regular season in school history, and a first-round home playoff game. If crazy plays out out on the final week of the season — Auburn over Alabama, Texas over Texas A&M — the Rebels will play in the SEC championship game for the first time in program history.
Florida has played in 13 of those mountaintop games, and won seven. That’s the bar at Florida, that’s the expectation.
If Ole Miss reaches the CFP this season, it will do so for the first time in school history. And one more time than Florida.
College football has changed within the boundaries of the CFP. Who and what is a success is as fleeting as it is fluid.
What once was isn’t necessarily what is.
The Florida job, for all its past and potential glory, is a beast. When Steve Spurrier left for the NFL after the 2001 season, he said he needed a new challenge — and because wins were exhaling, and losses were devastating.
Urban Meyer left Florida after two national titles because the beast needs to feed, and the stress of it all began to medically wear on him.
Some coaches thrive in win-or-walk mode, and maybe Kiffin would, too. Just don’t be so surprised if he eventually decides quality of life is more important than quality of job.
“I’m in the good ol’ days right now in my life,” Kiffin said. “Some people don’t realize it when they’re in them, and they get older, and they say, ‘Remember when?’ I’m fortunate to be in them now.”
Maybe bigger isn’t always better. Maybe it’s good to simply find your own peace.
Even if it is the outlier.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.