Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin is being pursued by other schools, including LSU and Florida, during a historic season for his team.
Kiffin has led Ole Miss to a school-record 11 regular-season wins and a potential spot in the College Football Playoff.
Now he’s a villain. Seriously, what are we doing here?
If this isn’t peak college football lunatic fandom — and frankly, media following and/or ginning up the narrative — I don’t know what is.
Lane Kiffin is a football coach. It’s his job.
Florida and LSU fired their coaches midseason and gave them a combined $75 million or so to get out of Dodge, and then turned their sights on Kiffin, currently the Ole Miss coach.
That’s the story. Everything else is speculative and utter nonsense.
Such stupidity, in fact, that we have to give it a name. So now Kiffin, who did some dumb things in his previous coaching lives, is a villain.
A villain.
Because he has a team at Ole Miss that’s a lock for a first-round playoff game in Oxford after a rout of rival Mississippi State on Friday, and if some funky stuff happens Friday night and Saturday — Auburn over Alabama, Texas over Texas A&M — could win its first SEC championship since 1963.
Because the Rebels’ only blemish this season is an eight-point loss at No. 4 Georgia, where Ole Miss scored a touchdown the first five times it had the ball before falling in the fourth quarter. That, more than anything, should leave little doubt that Kiffin has a team that could win it all.
A program he has steadily built from the mess of a first season during the pandemic, to double-digit wins in four of the next five seasons — including a school record 11 regular-season wins this season. The first time in 131 years of the program.
A program that struggles to consistently land elite high school recruiting classes, and has to be remade, year after year, through the transfer portal. A heavy lift of a job that Kiffin and his staff have been grinding through for more than half a decade.
Now Kiffin is supposed to drop everything, and either declare fealty to Ole Miss, or leave in the middle of the most magical season in school history. Just to please the vocal masses who want an answer now, and by god, they’re going to get it. That, or a pound of social media flesh.
Come on, people.
What’s worse, Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter has been caught up in the social media wash, demanding an answer from Kiffin a day after Friday’s Egg Bowl. But why?
Why would Carter willfully wreck a special season because he wants an answer or else? Why give the team to quarterbacks coach Joe Judge for the rest of the season, when a Kiffin-coached team could win it all?
What’s more important: the current gem of a season you’re working on, or the face you’re saving by demanding an answer?
Kiffin, believe it or not, is no different than anyone else in the workforce. A doctor, an attorney, a writer, a chef. Everyone is recruited by other companies, and everyone has difficult life decisions to make.
Kiffin’s decision is just playing out in the most public of all settings.
And because of that, because he has schools pursuing him — not the other way around — Kiffin is told he must make a decision right now, in the middle of a potential national championship run.
How incredibly stupid is that?
Nearly as dumb as a television bobblehead declaring Kiffin is a villain for allowing LSU, Florida and Ole Miss to “twist in the wind” at his whims. Heaven forbid if Kiffin’s family has gone to Gainesville and Baton Rouge to explore — after the teams have begun to pursue him, and while he’s dealing with a chaotic college football calendar that forces every coach’s hand when it comes to making career decisions.
Kiffin is the villain because he’s the hottest coach in the market, and because he’s Lane Kiffin — the one guy who will never, try as he might, outrun his past.
Why is Jon Sumrall not a villain? Tulane is in the middle of a CFP run, too, and he also has multiple SEC schools pursing him.
But he’s just a coach from the Group of Six looking to improve his lot, that’s all. He’s not on social media soaking up the attention, and playing it for all its worth.
Give me break.
Kiffin would be doing the exact same thing if he told LSU and Florida long ago that he wasn’t interested, and was staying at Ole Miss. It’s who he is, it’s not unique to this time or situation.
He’s of the old-school thought process of any attention is good attention., which is exactly where this whole villain thing begins. Because somebody has to be the bad guy in this ordeal.
There’s always the good, the bad and the jilted. Only now, there will be two jilted.
One of the two jilted that apparently decided it was no longer in the picture, suddenly added a new wrinkle to the unfolding drama. Early Saturday afternoon, Florida officials let it leak to whoever was interested — why does this sound like a theme in Gainesville? — that Kiffin’s “erratic behavior and communication” was the reason Florida decided to move on after it was clear they were no longer part of the process.
Erratic? Let’s see, he’s trying to win 11 games for the first time in school history. He’s trying to stay alive to win an SEC title for the first time in more than 60 years.
He’s trying to nail down, at least, a first round CFP playoff game, and maybe more if his team can get some help to advance to the SEC championship game.
So because he’s not at the beck and call of Florida — or LSU and Ole Miss — he’s erratic. And he’s a villain.
It’s utter nonsense.