Lane Kiffin's ego is once again getting in the way of everything
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With every day that passes and every hour that goes by, Lane Kiffin is descending deeper into an abyss of ego and solipsism that increasingly threatens his relationships, his reputation and most of all the Ole Miss football team he’s being paid $9 million to coach.
Maybe Kiffin, whose 15-year career arc took him from frat boy pariah to sober, yoga-loving responsible adult, yearns to touch the stove one more time. As he’s become the center of a messy coaching love triangle between Ole Miss, LSU and Florida, his increasingly childlike behavior and inability to confront the reality everyone around him sees has been a stark reminder why it took this long for anyone to take him seriously.
It's time to make a choice, Lane. What’s it going to be?
To its credit, Ole Miss has given Kiffin more space than he deserves to make this decision as its bye week has been consumed by fans trying to interpret sophomoric social media posts, a fraudulent interview on the "Pat McAfee Show" and Kiffin’s naïve insistence on pretending that everything is normal.
Few other schools would abide this, particularly as family members tour Baton Rouge and Gainesville like an incoming First Family measuring drapes for the White House. And even at Ole Miss, the window is closing to execute either a reconciliation that everyone can live with or to exit in an orderly way that won’t leave a trail of kerosene across the SEC.
Here’s where things stand as of Thursday afternoon, according to sources, with the very large caveat that we are dealing with one the most mercurial personalities in sports: Around college football, the feeling is that Kiffin will either be the coach at Ole Miss or LSU next year, with Florida fading to third. Jimmy Sexton, Kiffin’s longtime agent, has relayed to Kiffin that it’s time to show some urgency given all the factors involved here — including for some of his other clients, whose own decisions are frozen until Kiffin’s future becomes clear.
Meanwhile, On3 reported that Kiffin and athletic director Keith Carter will meet Friday.
Hopefully it will produce a resolution because Kiffin has already strung this out to a damaging, irresponsible degree. And the worst part is he doesn’t seem to know it.
One day he’s putting on a plastic smile and using running back Kewan Lacy as a human shield while being interviewed by McAfee to project a business-as-usual image; the next he’s tweeting a passage from some schlocky self-help book under the banner “Day 225.” What a coincidence that 225 just happens to be the area code in Baton Rouge.
One day we’re seeing pictures of his family getting off a private plane in Louisiana; the next he’s on the SEC teleconference pretending that we’re the crazy ones for asking if he’s going to be coaching Ole Miss next week against Mississippi State.
And frankly, it’s insulting to everyone’s intelligence when Kiffin gets up at his press conference last week after the Florida game and calls it “disrespectful” to the current Ole Miss team that all the media wants to talk about is whether he’s going to Florida or LSU.
He’s right, it is disrespectful. But the origin of the disrespect isn’t in the question, it’s the action of trying to leave a team while it has a legitimate shot of winning a national championship.
The disrespect is what Kiffin is doing every day to a school that gave him a second chance at the big time when most would not.
That doesn’t mean Kiffin should be welded to Ole Miss for the rest of his career. Like all of us, he has free will to change jobs if he so desires.
But whether he stays or goes, Ole Miss doesn’t deserve having an epic, once-in-a-generation season hijacked by his desire to be wanted, by his inability to handle the pressure of a tough choice like a normal human, by his thirst for attention and validation through social media.
Do you want the focus to be on the team and these being the “good old days,” Lane? Then announce you’re staying and get on with it. Or rip the Band-Aid off and leave. But the longer this goes, the more obvious it seems that he is dealing with dual desires to coach Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff and to have a second chance at a blue-blood job after his long-ago flameout at Southern Cal.
But sometimes life doesn’t work on a convenient time schedule, even for a football coach who can command $12 million or $13 million a year. So what’s it going to be?
Kiffin has implored his fan base to focus on the here and now, to not worry about what’s around the corner. But the mere suggestion Ole Miss fans should be thankful he’s college football’s most in-demand coach rather than a 6-6 mediocrity betrays everything Kiffin should have already learned about the profession he’s chosen.
He just can’t see far enough outside his own interests to understand how bad this looks.
Ole Miss has given Kiffin everything, all the tools he’s asked for to win at the highest level. The school has treated him like a king and is prepared to make him the highest-paid coach in the sport. Yes, Kiffin has delivered for Ole Miss, but you can’t ask for loyalty to work in only one direction, nor can you fool people into ignoring what you’ve rubbed in their faces all weeklong.
And the sad irony of it all is that everything Kiffin is chasing by engaging LSU and Florida — respect, relevance and a real chance to win the national title — is right in front of his face.
Kiffin has asked Ole Miss fans to live in the moment, but he’s proven incapable of doing it himself.
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