Lane Kiffin just held a news conference in Baton Rouge on Monday, and he immediately called into question the entire premise of why he even bolted from Ole Miss for LSU in the first place. This guy has been through so many “lifetimes” in college football you wonder if he gets confused which character he’s supposed to play, and right now he’s trying on “philosophy professor” when LSU is paying him $13 million a year to be a stone-cold killer.
The Ole Miss Exit Was Already Ugly, Now He’s Rewriting It
When Kiffin bounced from Ole Miss last December to take the LSU job, it was a defensible move. Sure, he sacrificed a shot at a national championship with the Rebels, and everything about the timing and execution was terrible, but he genuinely believed he’d have a better chance at consistently contending for titles at LSU. That’s a valid reason, right? So why can’t he just own it? The intrigue around his return to Oxford this week is already off the charts. We’re talking about his relationship with the players who stayed, an Ole Miss administration that feels totally conned by him, and whether the atmosphere will be so toxic it gets dangerous. There’s real College Football Playoff implications for both teams in this matchup too, making it one of the best games all year.
Suddenly, Lane Kiffin Is the Underdog? Seriously?
Here’s where it gets wild. Kiffin told his LSU players on Monday, “I told the players today, man, you don’t have anything to worry about as far as like attention on you all week. There’s going to be so much attention and hatred and everything on me, I said, you just get to go play. Really, the pressure’s on them. We won seven games last year, they won 13. They return two Heisman candidates. How often does that ever happen in the same backfield? We had it one time [at Southern Cal] with Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. So you guys get to go play. The pressure’s not on you.” Huh? If there’s one thing we know about why Kiffin left Ole Miss, it absolutely was not to be the underdog. Not in this game, not in any game. He went to LSU to build the SEC’s most feared and hated program. He went there to work with an administration that doesn’t care about personal accountability, to break norms, and to melt competitors’ brains. Kiffin went there to dominate. He wanted to win big, backed by a Governor’s Mansion and a university that would jump in Mike the Tiger’s cage before telling their football coach no.
Now, on the eve of a game where he can show the world why going to LSU was the no-brainer move he believed it to be, he’s pulling this? He also dropped this gem, “In games there’s a winner and a loser, but sometimes in decisions and things that go on, there’s not always a winner and a loser. They’ve been playing this matchup for a long time and this is the first time in the last 64 years both teams are in the top 10 … I think it’s a really good thing that a lot of people could look at it and say, hey, both sides are doing really well and both sides won.” Baloney! If Kiffin wants to be seen as anything other than a cartoon villain, he needs to get his story straight. The dude is completely forgetting why he left in the first place.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Yahoo Sports.
Leave a Reply