Trying to make sense of the unprecedented 2025 college football coaching carousel is enough to make anyone’s head spin. In the past 12 hours alone, it seems as if half the available Group of 5 coaches have latched onto various SEC jobs.
All the while, fresh off cracking Mississippi State yet again to bring the Egg Bowl trophy back to Oxford, the biggest instigator in this mess was apparently enjoying some morning hot yoga and meditation while the rest of college football burned to the ground.
Lane Kiffin held the entire sport’s attention for the better part of 2 weeks trying to decide between going to Florida, going to LSU, going to the NFL or staying in Oxford – all the while coaching the Ole Miss Rebels to an 11-win regular season and a presumptive spot in the College Football Playoff.
But somewhere deep in the journey that has been the Lane Kiffin Sweepstakes, the genial-unless-you-call-him-a-hoe-instead-of-a-housewife Rebels coach decided to eschew the scalpel in an attempt to extricate himself from Oxford and went straight to the flamethrower.
Kiffin wants to coach Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff. That is fair, except that he also wants to immediately begin building his program at LSU – with the clock ticking toward the transfer portal opening and the immediate need to hire assistant coaches.
The Ole Miss braintrust, naturally, sensed that Kiffin wouldn’t exactly give 100% effort to coaching his former team in a CFP run while simultaneously trying to breathe fresh life into an SEC rival. And how did said braintrust come up with that theorem?
Well, all they had to do was harken back to Kiffin’s self-immolation when he took the FAU job in 2017 while serving as Alabama’s offensive coordinator – a remarkable poop show that led Nick Saban to show Kiffin the door leading up to the national championship game.
Fast forward 8 years, and here we are again – with Kiffin outright threatening a coup while still wanting to coach his team in the Playoff. There is a special place for egomania like that, and Kiffin’s spot in said place is assured for all time.
It is fitting that Kiffin is off to Baton Rouge, given the clown show that surrounded Brian Kelly’s departure. Kelly never felt like the right cultural fit at LSU, granted, though the Tigers showed their stripes throughout the Kelly vs. LSU divorce – with the governor weighing in on Kelly’s massive buyout, the athletic director leaving in the same vapor trail created by Kelly’s dismissal and LSU’s half-baked attempt at saving some of Kelly’s buyout by claiming they didn’t really fire Kelly on Oct. 26 – even though we all very clearly saw that they did.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the very definition of a circus. And don’t think for a second that said circus now serving Kiffin’s particular brand of Kool-Aid will suddenly calm down the lunacy in Baton Rouge. Oh no, it will get even wackier there as their new coach attempts the linguistic gymnastics to try and explain his departure from Ole Miss.
In other words, Kiffin and LSU were made for each other. This is a program that had Les Miles eating grass on the field during games. This is a program that managed to win a national championship with Ed Orgeron on the sidelines. This is a program that, year in and year out, has the deepest pool of talent anywhere in the SEC but spends more time trying to get out of its own way than consistently winning games and championships.
The cherry on top of Sunday’s Lane Kiffin Sundae is that Ole Miss, having waited well past its self-imposed Saturday deadline for their grown-ass man to decide on his future, now has missed out on both former Tulane coach Jon Sumrall and former USF coach Alex Golesh. Time will tell if the Pete Golding hire works out in Oxford.
Golding will be gifted a program stocked with talent and ready to crush everyone in 2026. Especially amusing is the fact that the Kiffin-coached LSU Tigers are set to visit Oxford next season – a quirk in the new scheduling that will probably break LSU’s bank in security costs alone.
Finally, the Lane Kiffin Sweepstakes have drawn to a close. LSU is the presumed winner, Ole Miss is the theoretical loser and everyone feels a little bit played in the process. Did you really see it going down any other way?
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
