Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU over the holiday weekend, causing quite a stir in the process. Kiffin left a wardrobe, an angry fanbase and a team headed for the College Football Playoff in Oxford, but was welcomed to Baton Rouge with open arms.
Everyone outside LSU dislikes how Kiffin handled the situation, but ESPN's Paul Finebaum wanted to remind everyone that Kiffin wasn't alone in this. On Monday's edition of Get Up, Finebaum explained that Kiffin's agent, Jimmy Sexton, had a lot to do with what happened while also reminding everyone that this is just what Kiffin does.
Paul Finebaum: "Lane Kiffin is not the puppet master. The puppet master of all of this is somebody that most people don't know out in the hinterlands, but everybody on this panel knows, his name is Jimmy Sexton. He's with CAA and he calls most of the shots in college football."… pic.twitter.com/Ox60nBTt6i
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 1, 2025
"Now remember, Lane Kiffin is not the puppet master," said Finebaum. "The puppet master of all of this, Greeny, is somebody that most people don't know out in the hinterlands, but everybody on this panel knows, his name is Jimmy Sexton. He's with CAA and he calls most of the shots in college football."
That's when laughter erupted on the set with host Mike Greenberg pointing out that Sexton is actually Rex Ryan's agent. Finebaum acknowledged the laughter and continued.
"He's the agent here and he controls almost, not everyone, but most of the major coaches," he explained. "So yesterday when this coaching carousel went on, when Kiffin went here, about seven or eight or nine of JImmy Sexton's clients starting going elsewhere and he's the one who places them all and sets the market price."
Later in the show Finebaum took a more direct shot at Kiffin saying that he eventually left every school where he's coached and he's left most of them in a state of ruin.
"I won't bore the audience with his history," said Finebaum. "It's easy to find, but it's almost everywhere he's ever been, it's ended in ashes. That's why a point made earlier by Josh. Ole Miss gave him a chance. When he got the Ole Miss job he didn't have very many options. He was looking at Arkansas and Ole Miss. He was begging for work and finally, Ole Miss, a reputable SEC school gave him one. He turned the program around. He made it a winner. And what happened next? He does what he always does. He leaves. He leaves it in ashes and he leaves chaos behind."
As for Sexton, Finebaum's latest comments seem to support Gene Wojciechowski's claim over the weekend that ESPN does not give preferential treatment of the agent and his clients.
Such a lazy narrative…I worked at ESPN for 26 years, mostly covering CFB in some form—and Sexton clients. Not once did ESPN try to influence my opinions or mention agency client lists. If you want to disagree with @KirkHerbstreit, fine. But do so on the merits of the argument. https://t.co/bM396vahA5
— Gene Wojciechowski (@genowoj) November 30, 2025
This seems like something that people might pay more attention to the next time the coaching carousel starts spinning.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Paul Finebaum Names Who Was the Real ‘Puppet Master’ In Lane Kiffin’s Move to LSU.
