Lane Kiffin: Ole Miss fans hate him at 'way different level' than Tennessee did
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BATON ROUGE, LA – Lane Kiffin once occupied the space of Public Enemy No. 1 in Tennessee.
Vols fans’ loathing for Kiffin after he jilted them for Southern Cal after one season reached such a fever pitch that, when Kiffin returned as Alabama’s offensive coordinator in 2014, Alabama security recommended he wear a bullet-proof vest, according to a story Kiffin once told. (He didn’t wear one.)
Kiffin worked the Big Orange into such a lather in 2021 as Mississippi’s coach that he got hit with a yellow golf ball as Tennessee fans trashed the field at Neyland Stadium with debris during the fourth quarter.
Kiffin kept the golf ball and left with a 31-26 victory.
The hatred was real, and it was palpable.
Which makes Kiffin’s opinion on his current situation all the more remarkable.
He says he thinks Ole Miss fans currently hate him more than Tennessee did after he left.
“Oh, way different level,” Kiffin, now LSU’s coach, said during an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with USA TODAY Sports.
“The worse that (the blowback) is, it really shows you that it was an amazing run,” he added.
In Kiffin’s eyes, the difference stems from the length of time he was at each job.
He coached Tennessee for one season before he left the Vols for USC, what he considered his “dream job.”
He coached Ole Miss for six years and led the Rebels to its best stretch of success since the peak of the Johnny Vaught era in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Kiffin compared his exit to a marriage ending.
“It’s kind of like if you broke up with somebody. In this case, these are pretty big. They’re more like a divorce,” Kiffin said. “And, you leave by choice, but everything is going good on their end, they love it, and one person just leaves the relationship. There’s a lot of hatred. There’s a lot of villainizing, and that’s OK.”
Left unsaid by Kiffin: The timing of Kiffin’s departure might have something to do with the difference between Tennessee and Ole Miss, too. Also, the megaphone of social media is greater now than in 2010.
Kiffin left Tennessee in January after a 7-6 season. Bad timing for Tennessee, especially with national signing day around the corner.
But, he left Ole Miss — for rival LSU, no less — with the Rebels headed to their first College Football Playoff in program history. Kiffin wanted to accept the LSU job but still coach Ole Miss in the playoff.
The Ole Miss administration made him choose. He chose LSU and left.
Some Ole Miss fans gathered at the Oxford airport to give Kiffin a sendoff filled with expletives and middle fingers. Kiffin admits the blowback got to him.
“It does mess with you,” he said. “I’m human.”
Unlike the Tennessee situation, Kiffin won’t go years before returning to his old stomping grounds.
LSU will play at Ole Miss in Week 3 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium (capacity 64,038), in what should be the premier spectacle of the entire regular season.
“The only good thing is,” he said, “there’s definitely not near as many (fans) as a lot of stadiums, so it’s not like there will be 100,000, like Tennessee, hating you.”
Not inside the stadium, anyway.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ole Miss fans hate Lane Kiffin more than Tennessee Vols did, he says
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