BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA – DECEMBER 01: Lane Kiffin speaks at a press conference as he is introduced as the new head football coach of the LSU Tigers at Tiger Stadium on December 01, 2025 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images)
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If you’re wondering where those of us from Planet Earth should stand on all things Lane Kiffin (especially since he is the LSU head coach after he left Ole Miss last weekend despite the Rebels sprinting toward the College Football Playoff), the answers are yes, yes, no, no, yes and no.
Let’s start with yes.
Yes, even without Kiffin, members of the College Football Playoff selection committee spent Tuesday night moving Ole Miss from the seventh to the sixth-best team in the country.
Kiffin still had to go.
Yes, Kiffin had to take the LSU job for so many reasons, but none surpassed this: He knows how to add and subtract.
The difference between $13 million (LSU) and $9 million (Ole Miss) is, um well, $4 million, and that doesn’t even include all that other stuff.
I’ll explain in a moment.
For now, how many people you know have turned down a 44% raise?
You should be finished by now counting on one hand.
I know, I know. Ole Miss was willing to nearly match LSU’s offer, but then LSU would have countered that counter. Not only that, but in such an arms race between Ole Miss and LSU, you know who would not win.
No, Kiffin as a drama king isn’t new.
This guy ranks among the all-time elite of vagabond head football coaches, and if you didn’t know that, you are from another universe.
He was with the NFL’s Raiders for slightly more than a season, and then he returned to the college ranks, where he spent just a year at Tennessee. After that, he left for three seasons and five games at Southern Cal before his three years at Florida Atlantic and his six years at Ole Miss before he did the inevitable.
He went somewhere else.
It just happened to be LSU.
NORMAN, OKLAHOMA – OCTOBER 25: Head coach Lane Kiffen of the Ole Miss Rebels teases defensive lineman David Stone #0 of the Oklahoma Sooners for being ‘more quiet’ once the game was over at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on October 25, 2025 in Norman, Oklahoma. Mississippi won 34-26. (Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images)
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No, Kiffin shouldn’t have stayed at Ole Miss until the Rebels either were eliminated during the College Football Playoff or won the national championship.
If you have amnesia, here’s a reminder: During the weeks of speculaton over whether Kiffin would stay at Ole Miss or take one of the open SEC head coaching jobs at Florida, Auburn and, of course, LSU (or maybe go outside the conference to Penn State, another NFL gig or perhaps Ruler of the World), he was blasted locally and nationally for being a distraction to the program.
In fact, when Kiffin went with his son, Knox, to the Oxford, Mississippi airport for the flight to Baton Rouge for his introductory press conference, he said Ole Miss fans yelled at them when they weren’t trying to “run you off the road.”
Imagine if Kiffin had stayed at Ole Miss through the College Football Playoff after taking the LSU job. Now imagine if the Rebels had proceeded afterward to do anything shy of winning the national championship.
Unless you really do reside on Saturn or Mars, you could imagine in that situation for Ole Miss how The Lane Kiffin Distraction (on steroids, of course) would have gotten blamed for every dropped pass, bad throw, missed block, muffed kick, botched tackle, wayward field goal, blown assignment – along with for every set of missing car keys and less than sunny days from Tupelo to Biloxi.
You also could imagine Kiffin and his family needing an armored vehicle surrounded by the National Guard going from Oxford to Baton Rouge.
OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI – NOVEMBER 29: Lane Kiffin head coach of the Mississippi Rebels looks on before the game against the Mississippi State Bulldogs at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on November 29, 2024 in Oxford, Mississippi. (Photo by Wes Hale/Getty Images)
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Yes, this was a no-brainer, and let’s linger here for awhile.
Kiffin decided last weekend to do the right thing by leaving Ole Miss after transforming the Rebels from nothing worth mentioning for decades on the national level into a College Football Playoff team this season. By doing so, he left behind that measly $9 million per year he was making.
Measly?
Yeah, because Kiffin bolted Ole Miss for LSU, owners of several things of note since 2000: a 247-84 record, three national championships and an overflowing piggybank when it comes to paying football coaches, both past and present.
Take Brian Kelly.
Despite LSU officials rebelling at first, they provided an even happier Thanksgiving last week for their previous head coach by giving him every penny of the $54 million buyout in his 10-year contract that ended in October when he was fired by the Tigers after slightly more than three seasons.
Ed Orgeron was LSU’s full-time head coach before Kelly. Even though the Tigers whacked Orgeron after the 2021 season, Wilson Alexander of The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge reported Orgeron won’t get the last of his $17 million buyout until his payment of $426,000 on December 15.
Now comes LSU playing Santa before Christmas to Kiffin, whose new seven-year deal averages out to $13 million per season. Only Georgia’s Kirby Smart makes more ($13.282 million) among college football coaches.
Kiffin also has “that other stuff” in his LSU contract.
According to a combination of Forbes.com and ESPN.com, Kiffin will get everything from LSU-related bonuses ($750,000 for making the College Football Playoff, $1 million for winning the Southeastern Conference championship and $3 million for winning it all) to the top salary in the sport if he grabs a national championship to up to $500,000 from the university in compensation for the difference in housing prices between Mississippi and Louisiana.
LSU also will pay Kiffin the bonuses he would have gotten based on Ole Miss’s results in the upcoming College Football Playoff. We’re talking about $150,000 if the Rebels exit in the first round, $250,000 for reaching the quarterfinals and $1 million if they capture the national championship.
If that isn’t enough, The Advocate also reported LSU is preparing to give Kiffin a yearly budget to buy (OK, to pay) players through NILs (name, image and likeness) of between $25 million and $30 million.
No, Kiffin won’t stick around long enough to become LSU’s Knute Rockne, Bear Bryant or Woody Hayes, and not just because he’s already 50.
He’ll either get fired at LSU before the end of his contract, or he’ll return the NFL, or he’ll jump to another college football program looking for a quick fix.
Why?
If you asked that question, you haven’t been paying attention.