College Football: Making sense of CFB, look to Lane Kiffin

Some college football fans find the rapid evolution of college football dizzying. It is the result of what most happens off the field. Those trying to make sense of new realities should look to Lane Kiffin.

Yes, the same Lane Kiffin who has been college football’s most mercurial coach for the last two decades. After six seasons as an assistant at USC, Kiffin at the age of 31, became Head Coach of the Oakland Raiders. Early in Kiffin’s second season at Oakland, owner Al Davis fired him, challenging not just Kiffin’s coaching ability, but also his character.

Kiffin landed on his feet as the head coach for the Tennessee Vols. Shortly after one season in Knoxville, Kiffin, having ruffled a host of SEC feathers, abruptly resigned to become the USC head coach. Kiffin made it through three seasons and five games with USC. Southern Cal AD, Pat Haden fired Kiffin at LAX in the middle of the night. The Trojans were at the airport returning from a loss to Arizona State.

As Alabama football fans know well, Nick Saban salvaged Lane Kiffin’s career. Lane has repeatedly said the same thing about Saban. Though the end in Tuscaloosa was rocky for both men, Kiffin gained a passage back to being a head coach, at Florida Atlantic.

FAU improved under Kiffin, but when Ole Miss reached out in December 2019, it was a no-brainer for Kiffin to make the move to Oxford.

Recently Alex Scarborough sat down with Kiffin. Coming from the interview was an excellent piece about Kiffin and the Auburn job. At one point months ago, an inaccurate story was published that Lane had accepted the Auburn job.

Explaining why he stayed with Ole Miss, Kiffin said the turnover of head coaches at Auburn was not a concern. Even Auburn’s reputation for “meddlesome boosters” did not dissuade him. He stayed at Ole Miss for other reasons.

The reasons Kiffin passed on Auburn are several. But clearly, without NIL and the Transfer Portal Kiffin would not have believed he can win as big at Ole Miss as he might have at Auburn. As Scarborough points out, Kiffin does not love all of the new worlds of college football.

"Kiffin doesn’t love the current structure of NIL and the portal, and how intertwined they’ve become. He calls it like it is: semi-professional sports, albeit with almost no oversight, no salary cap and no contracts to keep players in place. The only limit is your imagination and the strength of your school’s NIL funding."

The new system means programs don’t have to rely as much on elite recruits and player development. Not dissimilar to NFL free agency, a coach can use the Portal and remake his roster every year.

The meat of Lane Kiffin’s new mindset

Kiffin believes players and coaches must have a “pro mindset.” That mindset is well explained in the quote below.

"These coaches sell parents on — especially in the south — come here, it’s family, we’re gonna treat you like family, I’m like, ‘No, they’re not.’ If it was family, then why do coaches bring kids in and say, ‘Hey, we want to help you transfer, it’d be better for you to transfer.’? You don’t do that to your family. So the whole family thing, I said, ‘We have to teach some reality that there’s a business side."

Imagine how that idea would have played in Auburn!

Lane Kiffin is not alone among college coaches rapidly adjusting to a new mindset. He is one of the most outspoken ones on issues most coaches want to avoid discussing. One example was holding on to his star running back after last season.

"If you don’t have a good collective, you’re going to lose your own players and then you’re really in trouble. I don’t care, you can pick an all-star coaching staff, if they don’t have a collective, they’re not going to win. So when you find a guy that wasn’t a five-star recruit — Quinshon — and you lose that, you can forget about it. How are you ever going to sign really good players? Because they’re going to say, ‘Wait, your own guy that was there and had all this success, he’s not even going to stay."

Lane Kiffin speaks truth about the semi-pro world of college football. And the ‘semi’ letters need to be in a smaller font. There is very little ‘semi’ in the world of big-time college football.