New Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has taken a circuitous route to landing a Power 5 job that may finally have some staying power, and in an interview with ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” he agreed with the idea that he’s more deserving of that level of job now.

The feeling is, according to ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap, now Kiffin really deserves it at 44-years-old. Kiffin admits he’s changed people’s minds about him. Perhaps he wasn’t deserving of past head coaching jobs like at Tennessee, Southern Cal or the Oakland Raiders.

“I think it’s a lot more positive than it would’ve been a few years ago, and I think that came from FAU, going on the field as a head coach because people’d say, ‘Oh, he’s a good coordinator but he can’t head coach,'” Kiffin said. “Turning the program completely around and winning two conference championships in three years.”

Kiffin compared it to someone going to prison and the feeling that, “they did their time.”

“People like a comeback story,” Kiffin said. “They feel like, ‘OK, he served his time.’ He served his time as an assistant, he served his time at a Group of 5 school, all right, now he’s deserving. So that’s probably accurate.”