By Hunt Palmer
Lane Kiffin managed his final days in Oxford poorly.
He knew where his future was headed but wanted to extend the present beyond where the Ole Miss administration was willing to let him. I agree with Keith Carter’s decision to pull the plug on the relationship with the biggest games in six decades on the horizon.
Kiffin played hardball. He was upset. And he left in a cloud of chaos.
All of that said, I believe what he said on Tuesday in Destin.
“I said it the other day to somebody, two things can be true at the same time,” Kiffin started. “They both can be true. You can have had a wonderful experience and everything you said about those six years where you needed Oxford and Ole Miss more than they needed you, and that can totally be true. And then you can choose a new challenge and go to another place. And so, both those things are true.”
Correct. Even though most nationally won’t see it that way.
Kiffin’s latest messy breakup adds fuel to the national fire that he is who he has always been. The immature young coach that Al Davis feuded with is the same guy two years later in a new purple visor. He tried to burn Oxford to the ground; how could he have loved it?
I find the answer to that question to be pretty simple.
Kiffin took the job at Ole Miss believing it was a steppingstone to something he perceived to be better. Auburn came calling three years ago, and he listened. I promise you that if Auburn (or a similar program considering Alex Golesh is in year one, but hey Auburn does fire coaches rather abruptly) calls Kirby Smart or Steve Sarkisian or Kalen DeBoer or Mike Elko seven months from now, they won’t even listen. They aren’t at steppingstone. Kiffin believed he was.
All the while, he enjoyed his time in Oxford. He liked having his kids around. He made life changes. He won a ton of games.
And when the time came to jump to two of the four SEC programs with multiple national titles this century, the thing he’d always envisioned, he’d found himself in a place he hadn’t — The College Football Playoff with Ole Miss.
Kiffin had pictured himself in Gainesville. Ultimately, the voices he trusted pushed him to Baton Rouge.
“We just weighed everything out and made a decision,” Kiffin said. “You’re not going to please everybody in decisions. You know that’s impossible, as it obviously has played out. But at the end of the day, I went through all kinds of different things, a number of different options, and made this decision for the next chapter.”
That chapter appears to be off to a fine start in Baton Rouge.
“It’s been great,” Kiffin said. “It’s been a great six months. Signed a lot of really good players and have guys committed and put together an awesome staff. I never said the decision (to leave Ole Miss) was just about winning national championships. There was a lot of things that went into it.”
If Kiffin desires a change of tune from the naysayers and critics, it’s going to come down to national championships or lack thereof. If Kiffin wins big at LSU, plenty will declare he made the correct call at a really difficult time. The other piece to that equation is Ole Miss’s success without him.
Pete Golding did a great job with Kiffin’s program against Georgia. He’s got elite talent leftover on the offense Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr. molded. After eight months, that foundation will be gone, and it’ll be Golding’s to maintain.
If Ole Miss remains near the top of the SEC and competes for a national title, Kiffin’s perception of the program will have been proven misguided. If the bottom falls out despite The Grove Collective’s efforts, he’ll be validated.
This ant hill will be kicked again in July for SEC Media Days in Tampa and then morph into a volcano the third week in September. Kiffin says he’s not spending time on that.
“I mean, I’m not even there yet,” he said. You know, we’ve got so much to work to do before that. We got a huge opener with Clemson. So, I mean, I’ve been back to Tennessee before, so I guess we got some practice at it, but we’ll worry about it when it comes.”
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