Hayes: Look deeper, everyone, and you’ll discover the real Lane Kiffin

DALLAS — All those years at all those coaching stops, the grease board never changed in nearly 60 years for Monte Kiffin. Morning after morning, year after year.

Show up and do your job.

So that’s what Lane Kiffin did, mere days after his dad, Monte, 84, passed away.

He eased into the Omni Hotel here for the annual carnival that is SEC Media Days, his young son Knox by his side — each an emotional crutch for the other — and a traumatic handful of days in the rearview still twisting his gut.

“His first rule as a coach,” Kiffin said of Monte, who spent six decades coaching at the collegiate and professional levels. “He’d never want anyone to have a bad day or be sad, so this is me trying to do that.”

In any other time, in any other situation, this event is seemingly teed up for Kiffin, long seen as college football’s perpetual funhouse. All flash, no substance.

Yet something happened a few years ago along the way to the house of mirrors. Lane Kiffin became a bona fide ball coach.

A winner. A team builder. A force in the coaching profession, and a man of growth outside it.

“Everyone sees the guy on Twitter,” Ole Miss wideout Tre Harris said. “You could say he has this sense of peace about him.”

Or as one Ole Miss staffer said earlier this year: “Take everything you’ve ever known about him and throw it out the window. He’s not what you think he is.”

Kiffin walked into the big ballroom at the Omni with his arm around his son, and apologized at the dais for beginning with words about his father and politely asking for no more questions about how he’s coping, how he’s moving forward without a man he called his “hero.”

A middle school friend from long ago, from one of those many neighborhoods surrounding Monte’s 15 different stops in college football and the NFL, reached out this past weekend.

“Your dad wasn’t a hero,” he told Kiffin. “He was a superhero.”

“He taught me everything, about coaching, about life,” Kiffin said.

Years ago when I first met Kiffin in 2009 at his first college job with Tennessee, I followed him on an offseason booster club tour called the Big Orange Caravan. He was young and aggressive, and had just accused the coach of the defending national champions (Florida’s Urban Meyer) of NCAA recruiting violations.

He was taking all comers from all corners, a brash and bold 34-year-old who may as well have been P.T. Barnum in a Big Orange jacket. But that bravado belied the truth: He had no idea what he was getting into with the insatiable monster Tennessee.

At one point, we hopped in a staffer’s car so he could go to Walgreens and buy a few things he needed. Really, he just wanted out of the tour for an hour. It was overwhelming.

When I relayed the anecdote hours later to Monte, he laughed and said, “He’s a football coach, not a salesman.”

Then he leaned over his desk and smiled, “Look deeper, you’ll see it.”

Less than a year later, Kiffin left for his dream job at USC, where he walked into championship expectations saddled by NCAA violations from the previous staff that included 30 scholarship losses. Guess who ultimately paid for it?

The road has twisted and turned and included the lowest of lows (fired by USC AD Pat Haden on the LAX tarmac at 2 a.m.), and the highest of highs (reinventing himself as an Alabama assistant and winning a national championship).

He rebuilt FAU and arrived at Ole Miss and told everyone to get their popcorn ready. Then won 29 games over the past 3 seasons, including a school-record 11 in 2023.

But, as Monte stressed 15 years ago, look deeper.

Kiffin has figured out and adapted to the new era of college football — to players earning off their name, image and likeness, and unfettered player movement — as well or better than anyone. He has mastered the transfer portal.

He has turned down bigger jobs than Ole Miss and more than likely will turn down more. He has found peace in Oxford.

He doesn’t drink anymore, and he’s a regular at church with Pastor Fish. He’s 49 now, and he looks like he’s still 35 — even on a day when he needed Knox to hold him after walking off the main stage and out of the room.

“When Charlie started working with and for (Kiffin) at Alabama, I had mixed emotions,” former Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said of his son, Charlie, also Kiffin’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at FAU and Ole Miss. “Brilliant offensive mind with what I had understood to be questionable character. Well, he has proven that the questionable character thing is a myth. He’s a family guy who cares about people.”

Look deeper, everyone. He’s not the same guy he was all those years ago.

He’s still the same ball coach, with a team this season that has enough talent to reach the first 12-team Playoff. Ole Miss, the only former SEC West Division program that never made the SEC Championship Game, is as primed for a huge season.

A star quarterback, the best receiving corps in the nation, and finally, the lines of scrimmage to match.

In between rotation shifts during Monday’s media circus, Kiffin ran into former Alabama coach Nick Saban. The greatest coach in college football history, the man who Kiffin says saved his career by hiring him, is working for ESPN as an analyst.

He stopped Kiffin, and they had a few words about Monte, and Saban told him he’s excited to watch Ole Miss play in 2024. Because the lines of scrimmage, where games are won and lost in the SEC, are long and big and athletic.

Just like Saban had at Alabama.

“He came and found me, and it was a very good moment,” Kiffin said.

Now Kiffin is talking about rat poison, just like Saban used to do. And how Ole Miss was a few plays here and there last season from maybe not winning those 11 games, and how chemistry and culture will be the deciding factors in how good this Ole Miss team can be.

Don’t believe what you hear, he says.

Just show up and do your job.

Matt Hayes

Matt Hayes is a national college football writer for Saturday Down South. You can hear him daily from 12-3 p.m. on 1010XL in Jacksonville. Follow on Twitter @MattHayesCFB