Lane Kiffin’s coaching saga that took him from Oxford to Baton Rouge was one of the top storylines of the 2025 season.
Kiffin left a College Football Playoff team at Ole Miss because he wanted the job at LSU, and it became a full-blown national story as the regular season ended and the Playoff approached. The Rebels that Kiffin coached to one of the best seasons in program history would be led by Pete Golding in the Playoff instead, and Golding got Ole Miss all the way to the semifinals.
While that was unfolding, Lane Kiffin was busy building his new SEC program in Baton Rouge, and naturally as Ole Miss kept advancing, there was a side eye on Kiffin, because that’s the team he could’ve been coaching toward a national title. Now, the dust has settled, Indiana has won the national title and everyone can calm down and focus on the 2026 season.
Except that hasn’t happened with some very fired-up Ole Miss and LSU fans, who are still going at it on social media about Kiffin’s much-publicized, polarizing move from one SEC program to another. Some examples of the arguing points on Twitter from both fan bases were listed a few days ago:
And to all of that back-and-forth about Kiffin from Oxford to Baton Rouge and back, Kiffin went to his own social media on Thursday morning to say, in effect, settle down people.
“It’s a sport guys. Stop attacking each other personally and each others families. Move on and both sides just enjoy what they have. Make a grateful list of what you have this morning and focus on that and not what you don’t have,” Kiffin wrote.
Kiffin made sure to include a couple of hearts and this hashtag: “LetItGo.”
Who knows how long the 2 passionate fan bases will take before they do in fact let it go. For now, the Twitter wars between the Rebels and Tigers fans are ongoing, with a whole offseason to decide how long they each want it to continue.
For Kiffin, he just wants to coach his new LSU team while he hopes one of the top storylines of the 2025 season finally dies sometime in 2026.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
