Lane Kiffin’s unconventional, up-and-down coaching career has made all kinds of headlines over the years. There was his unsuccessful brief tenure as an NFL head coach in his early 30s. He followed that with the one-and-done season at Tennessee and his infamous exit to return to USC. His Trojans tenure ended when he was “fired on the tarmac.” But a coach who has multiple national championship rings as an assistant and multiple 10-win seasons in a three-year span at Florida Atlantic is bound to get another opportunity on the big stage. On Dec. 9, 2019, Kiffin was introduced as the new head coach at Ole Miss.

FAU plays in Conference USA, one of the conferences in the Group of 5 tier. In a recent feature by Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports, Kiffin shares that he didn’t take the Ole Miss job just to get out of the Group of 5. It’s safe to say the SEC just means more to Kiffin.

“To me, there’s college football, then there’s the SEC plus a few teams — Clemson and Ohio State,” Kiffin told Dodd. “It’s not like I took this job to go to the Power 5. It was because it was in the SEC, a place that had won.”

“It’s not like going to one of these places that never won or hasn’t won for 25 years,” Kiffin added. “Five years ago, they were in the Sugar Bowl.”

Kiffin remembers that Ole Miss Sugar Bowl team well for good reason. During Kiffin’s first two seasons at Alabama, 2014-15, the Crimson Tide only lost two SEC games.

“They were both to Ole Miss,” Kiffin said. “I saw that first hand.”

We’ll find out if Kiffin can rebuild the Rebels into a team that can contend with Alabama. Dodd’s full feature can be read here.