Lane Kiffin's decision now looms over all of college football
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From Lane Kiffin’s office on the second floor of the Manning Center, one must walk the half mile along the exterior of Vaught Hemingway Stadium to reach athletic director Keith Carter’s office.
Or, as is the case often here, you just ride a golf cart.
Either way, it’s not too far or cumbersome. In fact, during renovations to the Manning Center, for a temporary stretch, Kiffin moved into Carter’s office and Carter moved out.
The point is, the two of them are close.
“We have a great relationship and a very transparent relationship,” Carter said from his office last Tuesday. “The communication has been great. You want him and the team focused on this unbelievable season we’re having and finishing strong. We all learned a lot from 2022 (when Auburn courted Kiffin) and maybe that one wasn’t handled the best way. At least this one has been internally handled really well.”
A week later, things have taken a turn.
This thing has now gone external.
Kiffin and Ole Miss seem mired in a staredown, playing out publicly enough to make it wholly unprecedented in the sport.
After all, how often has the family of a sitting SEC coach, in the middle of one of the greatest seasons in his school’s history, visited, not one, but two towns of conference rivals as he debates whether to accept their open head coaching jobs? But that’s what transpired on Sunday and Monday this week, when Kiffin’s ex-wife and other extended relatives made trips to Gainesville and then Baton Rouge on planes that Florida and LSU sent to Oxford as part of their courtship of the coach.
Just a week ago, during a visit with him in his office, Kiffin sounded like a man genuinely torn, internally struggling with a difficult decision: Remain at a place that’s brought you so much happiness and success (54 wins, a more healthy lifestyle, reuniting with his kids), or leave for a historic powerhouse you dreamed of coaching as a child (Florida and/or LSU).
On one side, there’s this: “I’m happy every morning I wake up,” he said. “I have two of the kids and their mom living here.”
And then there’s the other side: Kiffin acknowledges that he never grew up believing this place — Ole Miss, tucked in a tiny town in north Mississippi — would be the “final chapter” of his career, that he’d pass on big gigs to remain at a program that hasn’t historically competed for championships (zero trips to the SEC title game since its inception in 1992).
Everyone’s wondering. Everyone’s asking. What Will Lane Do?
WWLD?
But no one truly knows, possibly not even Lane himself — known historically for his indecision about such moves.
“He’s as unpredictable as his play calls,” says one industry insider, a nod to Kiffin’s mastery as one of the sport’s best in-game play-calling wizards.
“That’s what makes him so good at calling plays,” says another. “You don’t know what he’s going to do next.”
Let’s set the stage for Kiffin’s decision.
LSU, Florida or Ole Miss?
As it turns out, that decision could come sooner than expected. Though Kiffin told ESPN's Pat McAfee Tuesday morning that a reported “ultimatum” from Ole Miss is “absolutely not true,” Carter and the school’s administration would like clarity from Kiffin this week during Ole Miss’ bye week before the trip to Mississippi State. That much is clear.
What happens if there is no clarity? It’s not clear legally or contractually what Ole Miss officials can do. Firing Kiffin is a very unlikely if not impossible option considering his buyout. According to experts more familiar with this sort of thing, placing Kiffin on paid leave — barring him from coaching the team against Mississippi State, in the SEC title game and/or in the playoffs — would be more likely, if the school does anything at all.
But even doing this would likely make Kiffin’s decision for him: He’d almost certainly leave and accept one of the other jobs.
Why would Ole Miss set such a deadline with its sitting coach?
The college football calendar has sped up everything. Officials thought shortening and shifting the transfer portal from December to January would ease some of the coaching cycle circus. But the early signing period remains mid-December for high school and junior college players. And the expanded playoff threatens to ensnare any new coaching targets — like Kiffin — until or through the portal period.
For these two reasons, the entire firing and hiring process has been expedited. We’ve had September firings and mid-November hirings, for instance. Schools searching for new coaches are putting deadlines on active targets to commit to them while their teams are still playing. Ole Miss and others are pressuring their current coaches to commit to remain at the school — or else. If not, they stand to miss on replacement targets in this frenzied and accelerated world.
“It’s why we are all in a rush,” says one school administrator on a coaching search. “The calendar needs to change.”
But back to Kiffin’s decision.
For the most part, the money from the three programs — LSU, Florida and Ole Miss — is roughly the same. Kiffin himself has said that he hasn’t taken a job because of money in the past, “nor do I care about it.”
Is LSU offering Kiffin more than Florida and Ole Miss? Sure. But what’s a million here or there?
It is believed that all three programs stand to pay him at least $11 million annually in deals that stretch at least six years. In Baton Rouge, Kiffin’s contract would likely make him, at the very least, tied with the highest-paid coach in the country, Georgia’s Kirby Smart at $13 million. That also includes around a $30 million guarantee for the football roster (revenue-share + NIL).
That’s where things get interesting.
From his office last week, Kiffin acknowledged that the factors for coaches in deciding to take jobs in college football has shifted — from glitzy facilities, championship-winning tradition and recruiting footprint to one thing: How much above-the-cap, third-party NIL can a school generate for the roster?
According to new rules, schools aren’t supposed to guarantee any above-the-cap NIL for their players. And it seems foolish for schools to guarantee NIL to coaches for their rosters. Why? All NIL deals must be approved through the industry’s new clearinghouse, NIL Go, operated by the new enforcement entity, the College Sports Commission.
“You can have $50 million, but in the current system, you’re not going to be able to use it,” Kiffin said. “You can write a contract and say here’s your rev-share and here’s your NIL, but the NIL is not guaranteed until it gets passed.”
The College Sports Commission’s primary focus is to prohibit the phony booster-backed, third-party compensation to athletes prevalent over the last few years.
But will it work without mounds of lawsuits filed by players?
In just its fifth month of operation and with just seven total employees, the College Sports Commission’s enforcement capabilities remain unclear, and no players have directly sued the operation or even taken an NIL claim to arbitration. That’s probably because schools are finding ways to exceed the rev-share cap, mostly through redirecting corporate sponsor money from the athletic department to rosters (many of these are passing NIL Go, so far).
The most aggressive programs believe they can exceed the cap by at least $10 million.
But can a coach rely on a school’s roster guarantees? Kiffin doesn't think so.
“There’s no way to figure that out,” he said. “Why do coaches choose places? This place has all this money, but you don’t even know if you can use it. You can have $50 million for the roster, but if nothing changes and the [lawsuits against the system] don’t come and if it really works how they want, you’ve got to prove these contracts are worth the work players are doing and the markets are going to come way down.”
So, if you can’t rely on roster NIL guarantees and if the contract offers are similar, what’s the deciding factor?
Is it the happiness he’s now experiencing in Oxford?
Is it the dream of coaching at a powerhouse in front of more than 100,000 fans and having a better shot, at least historically, to win it all?
“You’ll still have the advantage of blue bloods and traditions,” Kiffin said last week.
And then, as if to keep you guessing, the coach acknowledged that, in this new era of player movement, the historic advantage from the blue bloods isn’t as important as it used to be.
WWLD?
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