Good And Bad, Lane Kiffin Is The Answer — And LSU Is Betting Big On It

Lane Kiffin is the answer. I mean it, and it’s true. Lane Kiffin is the answer. He’s the answer to who the clown — excuse me, crown prince of college football is after he both pulled off a genuinely legacy-defining feat and almost immediately managed to trample it in the Mississippi mud on his way to the swamp in Baton Rouge. Lane Kiffin is the answer… Or the folks at LSU sure as hell hope he is, after shelling out $54 million to former head coach Brian Kelly to make way for Kiffin, paying Kiffin bonuses for a College Football Playoff he didn’t coach in, handing him a reported $40 million to acquire the roster he believes he needs to be competitive and insisting on making him the highest-paid head coach in the history of the sport who hasn’t won a damn thing. It’s not just that Kiffin is one of three college football coaches raking in at least $13 million annually; the other two are Kirby Smart and Curt Cignetti, who have won three of the last six national titles. It’s also that Kiffin makes more annually than Ohio State coach Ryan Day and Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, who also share three CFP national titles between them. Hell, even an assistant on Kiffin’s staff, Ed Orgeron, won a national title as head coach. Yet, Kiffin hasn’t even led a team to the SEC championship and once got booted from Nick Saban’s Alabama staff because he was too distracted to do the job. Kiffin is the answer… for exactly who Tennessee fans loathe most among SEC coaches because he abandoned them after one humiliating season to head west to USC. Kiffin is the answer… to the future Jeopardy clue, “Al Davis openly called this former Oakland Raiders coach a ‘professional liar.’” Kiffin is the answer… for who Kirby Smart believes is the “Adonis of all college football coaches,” like he’s never heard of Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman, who is, without a dollop of doubt, the most attractive head coach in the sport, and it ain’t close. (Sorry, Deion Sanders.) Kiffin is the answer… for how Ole Miss coach Pete Golding informed folks at SEC Media Days on Wednesday that he was able to recruit star quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy to remain Rebels and not defect to the Tigers. “Just Google ‘Lane Kiffin,’”Golding told them. “A dude that they would have built a statue of here three days ago. Google his name right now. They wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire, right? And so they’re going to do the same thing to y’all two if you do what?” What a damnable fact. And yet there are many of those around Kiffin. Even Florida coach Jon Sumrall sought to put some distance between himself and comparisons to Kiffin on Wednesday. “How you walk into a place says a lot about you, and how you leave says even more,” Sumrall said. In November 2025, Kiffin held Ole Miss and LSU hostage. He demanded to coach the Rebels through the College Football Playoff, his legacy defining event, and wanted to accept the job at LSU. Folks at Ole Miss, within their rights and having some self-respect, said, No, you’re either coaching Oxford or Baton Rouge in December. You ain’t doing both. Sumrall faced a similar set of circumstances as he had coached Tulane to an invitation to the CFP while accepting the head-coaching job at UF. But there is a difference not just between the two jobs each coach was leaving but in how each of their former programs think of their respective character. “Lane and I talked as we were going through it,” Sumrall said at SEC Media Days. “He’s like, ‘You and I are going through the same thing in November.’ I’m like, ‘No, Lane, we’re not. If you leave, you’re leaving an SEC school to go to SEC school. It’s a little different. I’m leaving Tulane.’ It was challenging to do it. I wouldn’t have done it any other way. I may have been on the front end of taking this job, maybe not been at my best every second for Florida because I wanted to make sure I left Tulane the right way. “If any university had told me I couldn’t coach in the playoff game, I don’t think I’d have taken the job just because I couldn’t leave the team I had coached all year.” In comparison, Kiffin walked away from a team he’d coached all year, a team that was four games from winning the national title, for a bag of money and a bit more prestige. He also walked away from an opportunity to show maturity, growth and an appreciation for where his feet were — principles most coaches claim to impart to their players — at a moment when adulation for him and the mountain Ole Miss had climbed was at an all-time high. Lane Kiffin’s move to LSU will be a failure this season if the Tigers don’t win the national title after the price they paid for him, Kelly and their 2026 roster. But I sense Tigers fans can live with that. I wonder, will they be able to live with his inevitable exit, which will probably be messy, immature and bombastic? Lane Kiffin is the answer for whom many of us hope our college football coaches don’t become, and I sincerely wish that wasn’t so.