After more twists and turns than a daytime soap opera, Lane Kiffin has finally made his choice.
As was finally revealed Sunday, the egocentric Mississippi head coach is doing what had been hinted at for several weeks: swapping visors to take the job at LSU.
As a result, the clock is ticking on accomplishing the one thing he lacks as the man in charge. It is national championship or bust in Baton Rouge for the head coach who has held the sport hostage for the past several weeks.
Not in four or five years, but soon—real soon. As in, three years or here’s the door soon no matter what that mega-contract may say.
That much is unmistakable after Kiffin spurned a big offer from rival Florida, cut bait with a one-loss College Football Playoff team with a shot at that golden trophy this season and played everybody like a fiddle in the countless interviews he did from the moment this became a possibility.
Kiffin now must use every acumen of coaching knowledge he’s built up over the past two decades to take the Tigers on deep CFP runs and accomplish what every coach in the purple and gold has done since Nick Saban—save Brian Kelly—in the past quarter century by winning it all.
Good luck, Lane, you’re going to need it no matter how much more resources and talent you’ll have at your disposal in one of the best jobs in the country.
Because anything short of a ring and a national championship trophy in the cabinet simply isn’t worth it for all involved. It certainly wasn’t worth burning every bridge Kiffin ever built in Oxford, Miss., to get another SEC fan base invoking visceral feelings at the mere sight of him.
It certainly wasn’t worth holding up schools, players and fellow coaches as he took his time to decide.
But here we are, Lane Kiffin set to run out of the tunnel at Tiger Stadium next season. When he does so, there will be no excuses.
You want to coach at LSU and leave your own playoff-bound team to do so? This is the standard, no matter how much patience you want to preach upon arrival in Death Valley.
What it means for LSU
The Tigers got their guy, plain and simple. Due to a shortage of highly qualified candidates during a particularly active coaching cycle and Kiffin’s success historically in the SEC, it only made sense that he was the first call as soon as Kelly was let go and pretty much the only option for the school after it did not lack for drama in the past six weeks.
What they are getting is somebody who knows how to build an SEC program up. He knows how to recruit and develop quarterbacks (a bit of an issue historically in Baton Rouge) and put together an offense that the fan base will actually enjoy watching instead of having to tolerate with gritted teeth.
Plus, Kiffin’s edginess and lack of a filter when it comes to needling others in the conference will actually be quite appreciated at LSU as long as the winning is commensurate with the pot shots.
It’s not hard to hit the trifecta of a coach with the right résumé and fit who also proverbially “wins” the news conference with the fans, but it’s hard to argue that the Tigers did anything but.
What it means for Lane Kiffin
The only assistant coach to get fired during a national title run has now become the only head coach to be hired by another team during a similar championship run.
If Kiffin wants to erase that stain on his legacy—and make no mistake it is—the only way out now is to win it all. Nothing short of that will do.
Nothing.
That’s what happens when you so publicly court not just other jobs, but the same position at other conference rivals. That’s what transpires when you are gunning to dethrone your old boss, Saban, as the most disliked coach in the SEC’s storied history.
Saban earned that crown because he won relentlessly. Kiffin is in a close second place right now because he’s left town in one way or another and left a trail of hurt feelings in his wake. It’s one thing to earn a fan base’s ire, it’s another to willingly sign up for being the most hated man in Tennessee and Mississippi from now until the end of time.
But Kiffin also, unquestionably, upgraded and climbed the coaching ladder to one of the best gigs in the sport. He’s at a place and in a state where every advantage is there for the taking and you can not just win a national title, but you can win bunches of them.
You can question the methods. You can question the madness of the past few weeks. But Kiffin is a unique character in college football and now he’s at a blueblood job again where he can win big.
In Kiffin’s world, and potentially the real one, that makes it all worth it.
Final Grade: A
It’s possible this all ends in a spectacular failure for LSU and Kiffin wins up being Kelly 2.0 in Baton Rouge. But on the surface, it’s a great marriage that will wind up being judged by just one thing.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Grading Lane Kiffin to LSU: Move From Ole Miss Starts His Title Clock.
