Why Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU: Inside the decision

OXFORD, Miss. — They came in droves, speeding into the parking lot of the tiny University-Oxford one-terminal airport, to say a final goodbye to Lane Kiffin.

They offered hundreds of one-finger salutes, almost in unison, and shouted expletives at Kiffin, who announced Sunday he was officially leaving Ole Miss for LSU. 

From offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. to Lane’s ex-wife Layla, anyone who dared step foot on the two private planes sent from Baton Rouge received nothing but vitriol from spurned Ole Miss fans who so desperately wanted to believe Kiffin when he said he had changed and found happiness in their small Mississippi college town. It was mostly college-aged young men decked out in New Balances, but there were also multiple children, including one infant wrapped in a blanket and sucking on a pacifier. It’s never too early, after all, to teach your children it just means more. 

Never has there been anything like it, fans letting loose all their anger and disappointment at a man who had won 11 of his 12 regular-season games this year and had the Rebels all but guaranteed to make the College Football Playoff. Of course, never had a coach left a team with a real chance to win a national championship, still, either. 

How could Kiffin leave now? How could he destroy so much hard-earned goodwill, from the rock bottom of being fired at the tarmac in 2013 to a man the Ole Miss fanbase and Oxford community loved and embraced as their hero? 

To understand how we got to Sunday’s wild scene in Oxford, CBS Sports spoke with numerous sources with knowledge of the behind-the-scenes decision-making process that ultimately led to Kiffin becoming the next LSU football coach. 

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The drama, coincidentally enough, cranked up into overdrive on a previous Oxford airport experience. 

That was when a private plane carrying multiple members of the Kiffin family, including Layla Kiffin, was spotted arriving in Baton Rouge on Nov. 17th. It became a major national storyline, left Ole Miss administrators deeply uncomfortable about their head coach’s future intentions, and exposed what had been in the works for weeks. 

Kiffin and his representation had privately been engaging with three potential suitors for weeks at this point. By the weekend of Ole Miss-Florida (Nov. 15), Kiffin knew he could stay at Ole Miss or leave for either Florida or LSU. Both the rival SEC suitors had made clear by that point that Kiffin was their No. 1 target and they were willing to make him one of the highest-paid coaches in college football.

It was then that Lane told his family members, including his son Knox, that it was time to take trips to Gainesville and Baton Rouge. In the lead-up to those visits, various factions and voices pulled Lane in different directions. There were some in his ear, including CAA super agent Jimmy Sexton, telling him that LSU offered the best professional opportunities. Others believed Florida gave him the best mix of professional and personal happiness. 

There was, frankly, a lot to like about Florida for Kiffin. He was a huge Steve Spurrier fan and wore a visor in honor of the Head Ball Coach. His ex-wife Layla’s father, John Reaves, was a legendary former Florida quarterback. If the Kiffins all moved to Gainesville, Knox, a rising star quarterback at Oxford High School, could even play high school football at the same high school, Buchholz, his mother attended.

Kiffin had long been interested in the Florida job, even trying and failing to get in the mix back in 2021 when Florida instead hired Louisiana coach Billy Napier. After Florida fired Napier on Oct. 19 after a 22-23 record, it finally set up a potential marriage between Kiffin and the Gators. 

There was only one problem: the first conversation between Kiffin and Florida AD Scott Stricklin did not go well, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation. At the time, Florida was the biggest job available and had the perceived leverage to dictate some of its terms. That included wanting a general manager with an NFL background who wouldn’t report directly to Kiffin. This was a non-starter for Kiffin, who strongly believes in the abilities of Ole Miss general manager Billy Glasscock, and it got the pursuit off to an awkward start. 

(Florida announced Sunday it had hired former Jacksonville Jaguars general manager Dave Caldwell in conjunction with its hiring of Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall.) 

There was something just beneath the surface, too. Multiple sources familiar with Stricklin’s thinking had long cast doubt on his desire ever to hire Kiffin, a brilliant offensive mind with a penchant for stirring up drama. There was a reason, after all, that his mother used to call him “Helicopter” growing up. 

“He thrives on f—— with people,” one long-time friend said. “You cannot begin to understand how much he enjoys that part of it.”

Stricklin, a more buttoned-up personality, had preferred Napier’s no-nonsense approach over Kiffin’s antics the last time around. 

With the Florida booster base rallying around pursuing Kiffin, Stricklin did his due diligence and started vetting the Ole Miss coach before firing Napier. The biggest question he posed to those who knew Kiffin well was whether Lane had really changed and grown up. The answers Stricklin got made him comfortable enough to heavily pursue him as the next Florida head coach. 

Still, Kiffin was well aware that he wasn’t Stricklin’s cup of tea, and the feeling was mutual. It was the kind of thing that could have possibly been overcome if there were no other options, but Ole Miss all but allowed him to do whatever he wanted in Oxford and kept giving him more and more resources to push the program forward. “He was never told no,” one source said. Kiffin was concerned about Stricklin’s meddling and how they would mesh, later telling confidants he had a “weird vibe” about the situation. 

And then came LSU.

Kiffin delighted in beating Brian Kelly and LSU earlier this season, but even he may not have known what it would lead to. 

When LSU fired Kelly on Oct. 26th and later AD Scott Woodward, it became the story of college football. With Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry’s involvement in both Kelly’s and Woodward’s dismissals, it signaled to some that LSU lacked much-needed alignment and could be subject to the governor’s future whims, potentially hurting its ability to attract a top candidate. 

Kiffin wasn’t one of those people, however. In fact, he knew that if Woodward had remained the athletic director, he was very unlikely to get the LSU job, according to multiple sources. Woodward had told different people he wasn’t the biggest Kiffin fan. 

New athletic director Verge Ausberry, long a Woodward deputy, didn’t share those feelings. The initial conversation with LSU, especially in contrast to the one he had with Stricklin and Florida, couldn’t have gone better for Kiffin. 

As one source familiar with the conversation described, LSU’s pitch was: “Coach, we love you, we love what you’ve done. Whatever it is you do, however it is you do it, we just want you to pick that up, bring it here, we’ll fund it and let’s go.”

“Music to his ears,” is how Kiffin received the pitch. 

Some in Kiffin’s camp believe that had Florida made that same pitch right out of the gate, he could have ended up in Gainesville instead. And had Stricklin moved on from Napier a year earlier, as he considered before bringing him back for the 2025 season, multiple people believe Lane would have jumped at it following a 10-3 season that just missed the playoff cut. 

Adding to LSU’s momentum came a pitch directly from Louisiana Governor Landry, according to multiple sources. It was a productive early November call for both sides. It made Landry an enthusiastic supporter of LSU’s all-in pursuit of Kiffin, which included a seven-year deal with an average salary of more than $13 million and an escalator, should Kiffin win a national title, that would make him the highest-paid coach in the country. Landry had previously complained about Kelly’s $54 million buyout and initially vowed that LSU wouldn’t issue a contract like that again. 

After the Kiffin family visit to Baton Rouge went well, there was considerable optimism on LSU’s side that they would swipe Lane out of Oxford. One plugged-in source even told CBS Sports that week, while nothing was officially done, that the most significant questions were about public relations and an exit strategy out of Ole Miss, not whether he’d be LSU’s next coach. It was “very delicate with the Ole Miss side,” the source said, and Kiffin was “trying to thread the needle” to be able to take the LSU job and still coach Ole Miss in the playoff. 

Kiffin never explicitly told Ole Miss he was leaving, though. In fact, multiple conversations between Ole Miss’s football coach and athletic director Keith Carter led the athletics director to believe he’d stay. 

It was what made trying to predict what Kiffin would do so difficult for even those who knew him best. He could tell one person one thing and another the complete opposite. In recent weeks, there were days his staff was all but sure he would leave for LSU and then the next day Lane would talk about how good they had it in Oxford. Even those confident Kiffin would leave Ole Miss would frequently offer the caveat of him all but accepting the Auburn job in 2022, only to back out at the last minute. 

The Ole Miss administration, including chancellor Glenn Boyce, did everything in its power to keep Lane in Oxford. They were willing to match salary offers that he got elsewhere. They were committed to maintaining a competitive salary pool to attract and retain the best assistants. They believed a national championship was possible at Ole Miss and just wanted Lane to believe it, too. 

He ultimately could never get there, unable to resist the siren call of a “blue blood.” Kiffin didn’t believe he’d get a premier job again, according to those who know him well, not after he crashed and burned at USC. He had tried and failed over the years to get numerous big jobs that opened up, including Florida, Miami, Texas A&M and Alabama, but could never get traction. He seemingly had too much baggage for elite jobs, which preferred safer hires over the unpredictable Lane. 

🎠 Lane Kiffin’s wild ride on the coaching carousel

When he suddenly had two of the best jobs in the country, Florida and LSU, fighting over him, he couldn’t resist. It seemed to color the way he viewed his current job, too, even though he publicly said he loved Ole Miss. He’d privately complain about the fanbase and whether the program’s recent success was sustainable, especially compared to more historically successful programs like Florida and LSU. He locked in on what he thought were disappointing home crowds, telling some around him that didn’t happen in Baton Rouge and Gainesville.

He convinced himself that Ole Miss offered no more security than any other SEC job, including the two pursuing him, which had just fired their coaches after less than four seasons. He brought up the corollary to Kentucky coach Mark Stoops, who was beloved there for exceeding expectations at a typically extremely challenging job. Stoops had done so well at Kentucky that he even came close to getting the Texas A&M job in 2023 — the same one Lane tried and failed to get in the mix for —  but trustees reportedly killed the deal. 

Two years after almost getting the A&M job, Kentucky fired Stoops on Monday after a couple of disappointing seasons. 

Kiffin believed the same could happen to him at Ole Miss if he went 7-5 or 6-6 in consecutive seasons. If he stayed and passed up the LSU job now, he said he’d risk becoming Mark Stoops and missing his chance at a big job. 

Ole Miss did its best to dissuade Kiffin from this notion. For one, as they told him, he had never won fewer than eight games in a season when you excluded the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season. He averaged 10 wins a season, Ole Miss administrators explained to Kiffin, so why would he ever be worried about losing his job? The fanbase loved him, and he was the face of pins, t-shirts, and plenty of other memorabilia. Even his dog, Juice Kiffin, had become an unofficial mascot of the football program. He had more job security than any coach in the country, they reasoned with him.

But it never clicked for Kiffin the way Ole Miss hoped. All the talk about having a statue at Ole Miss one day never moved him. He was getting restless, even telling one confidant before the season he felt he was “ready for change.” One Ole Miss booster, who liked Kiffin and got to know him well during his time in Oxford, said of Lane: “He needs something to chase. Once you have conquered all and there is nothing left to chase, it’s time to go.”

That time had come for Kiffin. He was ready to move on to greener pastures in Louisiana. He desperately wanted to win a national championship like his mentors Nick Saban and Pete Carroll, and believed LSU offered him a better chance to do so than Ole Miss. He had been enamored with LSU for years, believing it was an incredible job with a fertile recruiting base and a state that only had to support one Power Four team, unlike Mississippi or Florida. 

There was only one issue: Kiffin still wanted to coach Ole Miss in the playoff.

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Weeks before Kiffin officially left for LSU, sources told CBS Sports that if Ole Miss was convinced that its coach was leaving, the school wouldn’t let him in the playoff. It wasn’t a card it wanted to play, but with the early signing period starting Dec. 3 and the transfer portal window opening Jan. 2, the school could not afford to start a coaching search in January if Kiffin was leaving. 

It created an increasingly tenuous situation between a man who wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, and a school that had no interest in letting him do so. For weeks, it bubbled beneath the surface with both parties hoping it wouldn’t come to a head. If he had left a year earlier it wouldn’t have been an issue, but wildly overachieving with Division-II quarterback transfer Trinidad Chambliss and a team picked to finish 7th in the SEC, made an exit that much harder. 

“His own success has made his own position so untenable,” one source said leading into the Egg Bowl. 

It finally happened on Saturday, during a meeting between Kiffin, Carter and Boyce at the chancellor’s house. It was then that Ole Miss finally, definitively knew Kiffin was leaving, after weeks of wishy-washy statements and noncommittal answers about committing to the school long-term. With Kiffin’s mind made up, Ole Miss was ready to move on. 

The Ole Miss coach wasn’t going to leave for Baton Rouge without a fight, though. In a conversation described as tense, Kiffin didn’t want to back down from his desire to coach the team through the postseason. When Ole Miss showed no interest in allowing him to do so, Kiffin, according to sources, threatened to take the offensive staff with him immediately if Carter and Boyce didn’t relent. They held firm; Kiffin would not be coaching the team in the playoff.

As word of Kiffin’s tactics spread, multiple Ole Miss football players confronted him in his office Sunday about it. Kiffin refused to directly answer whether he had told his on-field offensive staffers that if they didn’t get on the plane with him to Baton Rouge the next day, they wouldn’t have a spot on his LSU staff.

“I’m not making them go,” Kiffin told the players. “They can do whatever they want.”

Even after the Saturday night meeting that made clear Kiffin was leaving for LSU and wouldn’t be coaching the team moving forward, he was still pushing hard on Sunday to Carter and others to allow him to do so. He believed down to the very end he would eventually win out and get what he wanted. It wasn’t until Ole Miss informed Kiffin that it was moving forward with defensive coordinator Pete Golding as its coach that he finally relented and accepted his fate. 

He did not attend a team meeting, at the school’s request, instead packing up his office as Carter introduced Golding as the program’s next head coach. There were cheers and excitement for Golding, a well-regarded defensive mind and the best recruiter on Kiffin’s staff. 

As Golding feverishly worked to hold on to as many Ole Miss staffers as possible, Kiffin made his way to the airport. He was still upset he wouldn’t coach the team, even calling out Carter in a prepared statement. While he claimed the team asked Carter to allow him to keep coaching — and he did have supporters on the team in that regard — Ole Miss sources strongly pushed back on the notion it was a widespread feeling. Multiple players had become frustrated with Kiffin’s indecision overshadowing the team’s accomplishments, according to sources, and were ready to move on. Some even told the Ole Miss administration they cared more about whether their position coaches were staying than Kiffin at that point. 

Kiffin took many of those coaches with him on the plane including his brother Chris, Weis Jr., co-offensive coordinator Joe Cox and receivers coach George McDonald. Days ahead of the early signing period, Kiffin took general manager Billy Glasscock and senior director of player personnel Mike Williams to LSU, too. Kiffin on Monday sent out one of his famously cryptic tweets that included an easter egg: The flag of Trinidad, which of course could be interpreted to mean something we do not regarding Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss, who has filed a waiver for eligibility in 2026.

Quarterback portal dominoes aside, Kiffin alone was a massive coup for LSU, beating out two SEC rivals for Kiffin. The Tigers’ brass believed they had a coach worthy of following in the footsteps of Nick Saban, Les Miles and Ed Orgeron in bringing more national championships to Baton Rouge. With multiple police motorcycles guiding him through the city, Kiffin arrived in Baton Rouge like a conquering hero to a throng of celebrating fans. 

But after weeks of drama enveloped the Ole Miss program over Kiffin’s antics, overshadowing the best season in program history, even one LSU source expressed a tinge of concern. Kiffin had already infamously been the first coach fired in between a semifinal and national championship as Nick Saban did back in 2017, and now he became the first head coach to be pushed out before coaching his team in the playoff. 

“I don’t know that his drama is going to go well here at LSU,” the source said. “They want it now, but I don’t think they’ll like the drama.” 

More than 300 miles away in Oxford, a wild scene showcased what happens when the drama that felt so fun for so long finally turned ugly. A man once held up as a demigod was now a fanbase’s biggest villain. 

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