Ad Disclosure
Lane Kiffin opens up about first trip to Tennessee as Ole Miss head coach
Published:
Lane Kiffin spent 1 forgettable season at Tennessee in 2009, leading the Volunteers to a 7-6 record and a 4-4 mark in the SEC.
After that 1 year of mediocrity in Knoxville, he was gone, just like that, taking the head coaching job at USC. Kiffin eventually ended up back in the SEC, first as an assistant at Alabama and then as the head coach at Ole Miss, where he’s been since 2020.
Unlike at Tennessee, where Kiffin only brought controversy and then anger for how he left, Kiffin has actually achieved sustained success in Oxford. Kiffin is 44-18 overall and 25-16 in the SEC during his 5 seasons at Ole Miss, including double-digit win totals the past 2 seasons.
But Kiffin can’t escape his controversial past and that lone season in Knoxville. He remembers what happened while he was there, and he remembers what happened when he first returned there as the head coach at Ole Miss.
To nobody’s surprise, it wasn’t pretty at all, and Kiffin went down memory lane this week with comedian and podcaster Theo Von. But this memory was no laughing matter for Kiffin.
“We went to play them, it was on from warmups. Everyone was there, over 100,000 people. There was this hatred towards me,” recalled Kiffin. “I felt like The Gladiator in the movie like they were getting ready to [give me] the ‘thumbs down.’ Like ‘let’s kill him.'”
Kiffin also said there were “real conversations” about his personal safety in the lead up to the game.
“They had a real conversation with me during the week about bullet-proof vests,” Kiffin said.
Here is a longer clip from the episode where Kiffin tells all about that experience at Neyland Stadium:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
