What's a college football season if you don't end it covered in shame? This year was even more shame-drenched than usual, especially if you held the most heralded position on the field: head coach. This season saw more mid-season coach firings than ever before, a knock-on effect of the arms race to get programs in top condition before the recruit- and transfer-signing bonanza begins. This new reality has been hard on poor old coaches, who find it totally unfair that fans and ADs demand they win just because they are paid an exorbitant amount of money to win. They're just widdle guys, they can't help going 4-8 some years.
But this past weekend exposes the truth of what coaching has become for those at the peak. For the past two weeks, everyone has been on #LaneWatch, wondering if Lane Kiffin was going to do the most obvious thing in the world and take a better, more prestigious job over staying at an Ole Miss program that has been born again under his stewardship. The ultimate fate of the school he's jilting isn't of much actual concern—nobody really gives a fuck about Ole Miss. The angle people do care about is whether the jiltees would let the jilter coach the team in the playoff on his way out the door.
ESPN and the other sports networks are always happy to embarrass themselves to protect their sycophantic relationships with coaches, and literally anyone in sports with any power. But the talking heads' performances on Saturday, where they seriously tried to argue why Kiffin should be allowed to coach his team through the playoff while simultaneously working for their rival program, took the cake. If these networks had integrity left, they would feel ashamed of themselves. Everyone in this sport—hell, everyone even vaguely familiar with Kiffin—knew he was taking one of these big open jobs. You don't need to send Marty Smith to stand in front of barren walls like he's waiting for the school bus to tell us that. So instead of arguing about what he might do, they tried to manufacture a controversy by making it seem like it's only Ole Miss's hurt feelings that will keep Kiffin from being able to coach this "potential national champion" and complete the season out of love for the kids and what they've built together. All the candy in the world couldn't make me vomit the way that drivel does.
Let's get a few things out of the way. If Lane Kiffin believed he could win a championship at Ole Miss, this year or any year, he would not be leaving right now. He is surely leaving because he feels the same way about this team as I felt about them after the loss to Georgia: that they are close to but not quite at the level of true contenders. That is the curse of Ole Miss football. At their very best, they are usually still a step behind. As much as people want to believe that college football's new paradigm means that prestige or recruiting shouldn't matter anymore, it always will. This will always be a sport of haves and have-nots, and increasingly to be a have, you've gotta be willing to spend at least $25 million a year on NIL deals; to then fill out the areas where you don't need to spend as much, it helps to be in a great recruiting base like Louisiana. Though LSU is unquestionably a mess right now, it really shouldn't take much to re-establish them as a power. And as long as Kiffin doesn't start golfing, he will probably do better than Brian Kelly.
But if Kiffin doesn't think Ole Miss can win a championship this season, why does he want to keep coaching them? Because Kiffin has a massive ego and a lot of nerve. That was the main thing I took away from his recent ESPN puff documentary (with bonus Ray Ratto as a talking head!). This guy has a delusional level of self-confidence, which has probably propelled him to this position in the first place but must make him a nightmare to actually deal with interpersonally.
All of this—from taking the LSU job to the desire to coach out the Ole Miss season to the elaborate media campaign that was so obviously manufactured, you could practically see superagent Jimmy Sexton's hands pulling the strings from above ESPN's studio—is about Kiffin's ego. It's the coaching ego, and coaches love to play out the "me sowing, me reaping" meme. They will drum up publicity for themselves, ask for gargantuan paychecks, and establish this king-atop-the-mountain persona when things go well, only to immediately pretend to be helpless children just doing the best they can under unrealistic expectations when things stop going well. It's been just over a decade since Kiffin was getting fired on a tarmac, and after some reputational clean-up at Nick Saban's School for Wayward Coaches, he's being feted like the new king of college football. Multiple 10-win seasons at Ole Miss are nothing to sneeze at, as it's the most success they've ever had, but what do they actually have to show for it? Not an SEC championship, and now not even a first-ever playoff win, at least under Kiffin. There's still no proof of concept for this guy, and yet we must endure all this pomp and circumstance.
If coaches get to enjoy such fervor and demand, it's hardly unfair to hold them accountable when they disappoint. The Penn State job is being held hostage by the aforementioned Sexton, who represents most of the elite coaches in the sport including James Franklin, and they both get to execute power over a program's ability to move on. Franklin isn't some supreme talent above reproach—if he were, he wouldn't be at Virginia Tech right now. And Lane Kiffin isn't some infallible football savant whose every whim deserves to be indulged. But time and time again, coaches get to use their best seasons to squeeze as much power and influence and money as humanly possible, loyal only to their own egos and bank accounts. Well, fine. But if that's the case, don't ask me to cry for them the moment things go south.
