College Football Teams Can't Keep Making the Lane Kiffin Mistake
The flashy coach is not worth a fraction of the drama he brings with him—and teams end up struggling when he leaves.
Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Hope you made it home safely from your Thanksgiving travels, because I still haven't—maybe by next week?
Alas, the newsletter must go on, so we've got another short edition for you today about why schools should stop hiring Lane Kiffin. Let's get to it.
Don't miss sports coverage from Jason Russell and Reason.
Locker Room Links
- Should Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens be in the Hall of Fame? The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee will vote on it this weekend.
- Gov. Greg Abbott (R–Texas) goes out of his way to weigh in on the case for Texas making the College Football Playoff. (Don't lose three games and you won't have this problem!)
- "Detroit approved tax abatements for a new pro sports arena and facilities without large opposition from the public."
- Iran is skipping the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C., on Friday after some of its delegation had their visas denied.
- French police used "pepper spray, batons and shields" against Newcastle United fans after a soccer match in Marseille.
- "Coastal Carolina had a Revolutionary War reenactment at halftime"
- Elsewhere in Reason: It's time for the annual Reason Webathon! Donate to Reason and get cool stuff.
- Hard pass on whatever this is.
Last week, Argentina's FA created a new trophy with no warning, gave it to Rosario Central and made Estudiantes give a guard of honor. The players turned their backs in protest ????????
The AFA has now banned all 11 players for two games next season. Wild ????pic.twitter.com/dHore9kFw5
— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) November 27, 2025
Lane Change
Lane Kiffin is in the news again. But if he's doing the same thing he always does, is it really news?
Kiffin is leaving Ole Miss, immediately, for Louisiana State. It's his sixth head coaching job in 19 years, starting when he was a 31-year-old hotshot hired by Al Davis to coach the NFL's Raiders in 2007. To be fair, he held the Ole Miss job for six seasons (well, almost), longer than any of his other coaching stints. But he still leaves the football program behind, with maximal drama and a trail of damage in his wake.
So it's been with every other Kiffin job. He arrives as a savior who will surely bring a wayward program back to title-winning glory. Then there's drama, some wins, and some losses. He leaves without winning a national title. Rinse and repeat.
What's less often discussed is how those programs do in his wake. He doesn't leave behind a legacy of a program that's been set up for success; he leaves programs struggling to catch back up.
Look at the records after he's left his previous coaching jobs.
After getting fired by the Raiders, it took the team eight more years to get a winning record (though that probably had more to do with mismanagement by the Davis family). After one mediocre season at Tennessee, Kiffin jumped ship for USC. Vols fans were understandably quite upset. The Volunteers had four more losing seasons and two more coaches before finding more success. After firing Kiffin in the middle of his fourth season at USC, the Trojans bounced back and performed well with interim head coach Clay Helton—but Helton was replaced by Steve Sarkisian, who had one good season before getting fired in his second for showing up to practice drunk. Kiffin then ended up as Alabama's offensive coordinator for a few seasons, one of them with a national championship. But he was dramatically fired a week before another title game because he had taken on the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic (FAU), which became a distraction while he tried to finish the season out at Alabama (then the Tide lost the championship game). The FAU gig was going pretty well as far as Conference USA teams can do, and at one point Kiffin had a 10-year contract with the Owls. But obviously Kiffin is no longer there—in his third season, he ditched the program before the bowl game to start at Ole Miss. The Owls have only been to one more bowl game since.
Colleges don't need to do this. They don't need the drama. They don't need Kiffin to recruit good players anymore—money can do that. Instead, LSU is currently paying three different head coaches. The school should know better because they have a track record of winning in spite of their coach, not because of them. "The Tigers won national championships with three different, consecutive head coaches — first Nick Saban, then Les Miles, then Ed Orgeron," sportswriter Rodger Sherman wrote in his newsletter. "That is to say, they won with a genius, a guy who ate grass, and a horny swamp man, respectively."
My problem is less with Kiffin jumping from school to school than the schools empowering him to do so. Kiffin is just doing what most people would do in normal jobs when they get a higher-paying job offer from a more prestigious institution. That doesn't mean you have to like what he's doing, though.
LSU might win a few more games with Kiffin, but then he'll either flame out or ditch town right when he's on the precipice.
Maybe the LSU gig will go better than his past jobs. Maybe these poor records are examples of Kiffin overachieving in a situation where no one else could. Maybe Kiffin will stay at LSU for a decade-plus and win multiple championships. Or maybe if Kalen DeBoer gets fired from Alabama next year for losing a mere three games, we'll be having this whole debate about Kiffin all over again.
Replay of the Week
Most athletes get an assist and then tear their ACL. Kyle Palmieri did it in the opposite order.
NYI announce today Palmieri out 6-8 months due to a left knee ACL tear.
An incredible assist https://t.co/vlm1nef0uq
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) November 29, 2025
That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, James Madison against Troy in the Sun Belt Football Championship Game (Friday, 7 p.m., ESPN).