Lane Kiffin hasnt stopped pushing boundaries as college footballs biggest villain with all eyes on LSU
Success on the field and the recruiting trail, drama everywhere else.It is the Lane Kiffin mission statement.In the last eight months alone, he led Ole Miss to its first College Football Playoff appearance, then left the program for LSU and a $91 million contract prior to the 12-team tournament.He brought the nation’s top transfer class to the bayou, according to 247Sports.com, and didn’t stop there, attempting to add players off NFL training camp rosters in recent weeks.There isn’t a more polarizing figure in the entire sport than the visor-wearing, brash-talking, well-traveled Kiffin.“He’s the biggest villain I think the sport has had in modern time,” SEC historian and ESPN college football analyst Paul Finebaum told The Post in a phone interview.
“It is a great story on many levels, and the person happiest with that is Lane Kiffin.It’s who he is.
I think he’s a great coach, but he’s a better puppeteer and entertainer.”“People go, well, what’s the big deal, if they don’t follow college football.The big deal is that no one has ever done what he did last season.
He walked out on a team that had a chance to win the national championship.Quite frankly, only Lane Kiffin could do that.
You can tell me, top 30 coaches in America, would anyone else have done it, no, and he did it, and he got away with it.”This isn’t new when it comes to Kiffin.He was once fired at an airport by USC.
He left Tennessee following one season, leading to campus unrest after he had assured fans and recruits he wasn’t going anywhere.Nick Saban let him go as his offensive coordinator at Alabama a week before the 2017 national championship game, because Kiffin wasn’t giving the job enough attention after taking the head coaching position at Central Florida.The noise had begun to quiet around Kiffin in recent years.
He took over at Ole Miss in 2020, and turned around a program that had enjoyed only brief instances of success.He became the second Rebels coa...