Ad Disclosure
Wasson: Lane Kiffin is finally the great coach he always thought he was
By David Wasson
Published:
Lane Kiffin has lived a lifetime as a football coach – over 25 years in the fishbowl first as a college assistant, then at the NFL level and back again as a college assistant and again a head coach.
Kiffin’s life has been experienced, largely, in front of our very eyes. We have seen him succeed and fail alike, earning admiration and affirmation and scorn and ridicule and everything in between.
Still on the good side of 50, Kiffin has a ton of time before hanging up the whistle. But it is certainly possible that, now as comfortable as he ever has been in the nomad’s life he chose, Kiffin has finally become what was seemingly his destiny from the very start.
A great football coach.
In his 4th season at Ole Miss, Kiffin had seen plenty of evolution even before spending Day 1 in Oxford as the coach of the Rebels. The son of longtime NFL defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, Lane grew up in the game – ascending as a player to become a backup quarterback at Fresno State in 1997.
Kiffin’s first coaching gig was as a graduate assistant at Colorado State in 1999, and after a year as a defensive quality control specialist with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars headed to Southern Cal to coach tight ends, wide receivers and eventually become offensive coordinator.
The Oakland Raiders came calling in 2007 at age 31, which led to less than 2 tumultuous years working for Al Davis before being fired. Unemployment didn’t last long, as Tennessee wanted Kiffin to replace long-time coach Phil Fulmer for the 2009 season. Kiffin was in Knoxville just 1 year before abruptly bolting back to USC to replace Pete Carroll.
Despite 28 wins in 3-plus seasons, Kiffin endured a firing somehow more embarrassing than when Davis cut him loose in Oakland – being fired on an airport tarmac after a 62-41 loss to Arizona State.
Kiffin was as low as possible in the profession, but the Nick Saban Coaching Rehabilitation Program was beckoning at Alabama – luring Kiffin to Tuscaloosa first as an offensive analyst and then as an offensive coordinator.
It was an unconventional, mercurial partnership from the jump, the tightly wound, defensive genius Saban tangling with the emotive, expressive offensive genius Kiffin. But it was an unquestioned success – as the Tide evolved into a passing force and won the 2015 national title along the way over 3 seasons despite Saban ass-chewing Kiffin on the headsets every week.
It didn’t end cleanly, though, much like a lot of recent Kiffin professional relationships – as Kiffin took the Florida Atlantic coaching job while Alabama was trying to win the 2017 College Football Playoff national title. But Kiffin’s re-entry as a head coach was a calculated success, as his brash nature had been tempered by Saban just enough to find tremendous success in Boca Raton.
Kiffin popped off a pair of 10-win seasons and 2 C-USA titles at FAU, all the while embracing Twitter as a social media tool to recruit/needle/express his unique brand of humor that fans quickly loved. So when Ole Miss came calling in 2020, it was time for Kiffin to make the jump back to the SEC to take on Saban and the rest of the best conference in the country.
Kiffin at Ole Miss has been Kiffin truly in full bloom. He isn’t shy about expressing himself on Twitter to this day, though he has also buckled down and become the kind of complete coach the game’s cognoscenti always though he could be.
Oh, he can still throw barbs – either via his social media presence or with a blast of dry wit in front of a live mic – with the best of them. And there isn’t a narcissist alive who doesn’t recognize a little bit of themselves in the Ole Miss coach.
But if nothing else, Kiffin has finally caught up to his own antagonistic combination of hype and hope. Through clever recruiting and adroit use of the transfer portal, Ole Miss assembled a strong team heading into the 2024 season. And the Rebels overcame a home loss to Kentucky early this season to evolve into a team that knocked off SEC power Georgia to remain in the Playoff hunt.
All the while, Kiffin – unapologetically himself through and through – has evolved into a great head coach. The coach who rebuffed potential advances from Auburn and Alabama in recent seasons is now on the cusp of having the Rebels to potentially make the SEC title game for the first time in school history.
Brash? Yes. Narcissist? Yes. The John McEnroe of college football? Absolutely. They all apply to Lane Kiffin, without debate from observers or the man himself.
But through all the ups and downs a life spent in the game, and looking 50 squarely in the eye, Kiffin has also finally bloomed into what he was always meant to be (and he always thought he was) …
A great football coach, on the verge of taking to Ole Miss all the way to the mountaintop.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
