After Ole Miss fallout, Lane Kiffin finds offline clarity and purpose at LSU

TAMPA, Florida – Lane Kiffin’s son issued a challenge in May.

You are on social media all the time. I bet you couldn’t come down.

Kiffin, being Kiffin, couldn’t let it stop. So he left social media. He even deleted apps from his phone.

The LSU coach has always been a hot rod, voicing his opinions and teasing his fellow coaches on social media, but that took a turn for the worse when he left Ole Miss for LSU before the Rebels lost in December. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey made part of his introduction on Thursday SEC dividend payment dates in Tampa

“Lane has not been on social media since May 11,” Sankey said. “My suggestion is that someone give me a hug Knox.”

The past nine months have provided one of the most remarkable chapters in the most difficult coaching legend in college football. What he does next at LSU could be a defining moment for the man and coach, who has won 10 or more games in half of his 14 seasons as a head coach.

Kiffin is often reflective and philosophical in public after touchstone moments in his life — from leaving Tennessee for LSU after a year, shooting at USC, his dramatic weight gain and weight loss, and his mentorship relationship with Nick Saban, the greatest coach of all time. When Kiffin sits still, he thinks about the transfer portal, the program’s construction and the butterfly effect of the win that redirected his career as the only coach to lead three different SEC programs. As he flew into Tampa on Thursday, he thought of his father, legendary defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, who spent 13 years here redefining the NFL’s Buccaneers’ defensive schemes and died two years ago. In a way, Kiffin’s decision not to go on Twitter provided some clarity during the most difficult season of his career.

“I think whenever I remove something — whether that was bad habits, whether that was food, whether that was alcohol, whether that was toxic relationships, now social media — whatever I’ve removed from your life, once you remove it, you start to realize how many people depend on it that you didn’t really realize,” Kiffin said.

He was telling his players the same thing. There is clarity in the termination, especially for Kiffin, whose life is not quiet.

Kiffin’s departure from Ole Miss, where he led three of the most successful years in school history, came up again this week in Tampa.

Kiffin took out the coordinators and the players, and took away the favor of the fans who were never, by any means, better. Ole Miss went 11-1 in his final season, reached the College Football Playoff for the first time in school history, and sent Kiffin off on the highest note in the program’s modern era.

So, why are you leaving?

“Every position is not for everybody,” said new Ole Miss coach Pete Golding. “That coach, the players, your work, that’s all. It’s okay.”

Golding, who was promoted from defensive coordinator to head coach, is being asked about it everywhere. The Ole Miss caravan. Media days. All stops, all rooms. He called it on stage: Tell me how you really feel about him.

“It’s ex. There will always be history,” Golding said. “Do you have an ex? Are you married? If you get married and have an ex that your wife knows, it never ends, it never dies, it is always raised.”

The new Ole Miss coach made peace, he said. Honestly. He didn’t know Kiffin before Ole Miss, he didn’t follow him from Alabama. He came to Oxford to plant roots, raise three children and continue to build. He won two playoff games as an interim coach.

“Our relationship really grew in those three and a half years and he did a lot for me and I was very, very grateful for the way he treated me and my family. I learned a lot from him.”

He writes to Kiffin regularly. “There are certain things we will talk about and some things we won’t.”

Kiffin said almost the same thing. “We have a great relationship. Those were three wonderful years together.”

That’s a public story, but the real story is the one played out in offices, portal windows and late-night chats. Like any relationship, it’s more complicated than that.

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Before TJ Dottery transferred to LSU, Golding called him into his office.

He told her that he thought he would be dumb to leave and what he would lose by going to Baton Rouge.

The message he sent to the team in Oxford – and later confirmed in a wide-ranging interview with ESPN – was unequivocal. Golding had the name Google Kiffin. He asked them to look at what the internet is doing to a man who three years ago was going to have a statue at Oxford. He believed that leaving Ole Miss for LSU would hurt the future of the players who chose to follow Kiffin there. Golding recounted a conversation he had with Ole Miss star quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy, who was targeted by Kiffin to follow him to LSU but chose to stay at Ole Miss.

“Football is going to end,” Golding said, according to ESPN. “What are you going to use? You have to use the alumni base to be able to get you a job. Where are you going to bring your kids? What jersey do they wear? Both of them created a legacy in one season that will be hard for anyone to surpass, and what happens now, for Coach Kiffin to leave — with Google Lane Google Lane Kide Kide. They could have built a statue here three days ago. What they’re paying, you’ll never get to that.”

Dottery heard. He went anyway.

“Yes, sir,” Dottery said Wednesday when asked if Golding personally delivered a version of that message. “Kind of similar statements, for sure. And that’s why I said it before — I knew that would be some of the results.”

He went straight to where Golding came out. He didn’t stay.

“My personal decision — it wasn’t personal, it was business,” Dottery said. “And I hope everyone can understand that.”

The business of it all is what Kiffin keeps coming back to.

He spoke candidly about the butterfly effect — the way the Ole Miss-LSU game played out last November, a win that ended his tenure at Oxford and opened the door to Baton Rouge, went out. Golding got the head coaching job. Players got NIL money in both places. Programs that were already good have received resources they didn’t have before.

“In a lot of ways, a lot of people have won,” Kiffin said. “A lot of coaches stay or come. They were able to keep Pete Golding as the head coach, so he became the head coach. The players got a lot of really big contracts at both places. The assistant coaches did at both places. They’re both being talked about a lot as top programs going into next year.”

Golding has stepped back from that frame enough to be honest about it, even if the ending is the same.

“I’ll be the first to tell you that I told him I would think he was dumb when he left,” Golding said. “I wanted him to stay. It was a selfish decision because I loved being DC where I was. He decided what was best for him and his family, and that’s what he had to decide. There’s nothing wrong with him at all. I wish him luck. We play him like every other team in the SEC, and we’re both going to show up and see football and play.”

Dottery cried one night after making her decision.

He says not because it was wrong, but because it was expensive.

“Sure man, it was hard for me” “father.” “I even cried one night just because of my love for my teammates, the coaches, even the fans, men — the people who brought me in when I first arrived. They brought me in like I was one of them.”

The connection to Ole Miss has not been severed. He still talks to his old colleague and plays video games with them.

On September 19, the Tigers come to Oxford. Dottery will go back to that building on the other side.

“Yes, everyone has different feelings,” he said. “Emotions will be really high. But another chance to play football, guys. That’s all I like.”

Kiffin, outside of social media, says he’s very much about it. On Thursday mornings at 5 am, he works out at Club Tampa. You have seen others grab their phones before they even catch a breath, endlessly scrolling, comparing their lives with those that seem to be the best on social media. He coined the name, a slogan he stole from motivational speaker Kevin Elko, who spoke at his father’s funeral: comparisons are the thief of joy. He has been preaching its absence. Knox challenged him to see it.

“I wanted to show him I could do it,” Kiffin said. “And it was really interesting. I think as I look back on my life, my journey, a lot of good things have come when I’ve taken things out of my life, when I’ve finished them.”

He built something in Baton Rouge with a new quarterback (Arizona State’s Sam Leavitt) and a new program that included four Ole Miss transfers. For whatever reason, Kiffin likes a fresh start, even if it cost him to leave an Ole Miss program that had a chance to play for a national title.

“You follow my life. I built my life by pushing without comfort,” he said. “That might not be for everyone. That’s okay. That’s just the way it is. This job really pushed me beyond comfort to take a new job, to be at LSU — like everybody’s talking about, the pressure of LSU and what comes with that.

“And there’s more things to do as the head coach of LSU than anywhere else that’s been asked of me. I’ve really enjoyed that. It’s been fun doing that, and rebuilding within the program, the roster and coming off a 7-6 season and then everyone’s expectations in the media that we should be this big team for a surprise challenge.

“You want to talk about being uncomfortable. That does. Expectations make you uncomfortable. It makes you not able to just go through any part of your program. So that’s been great. I can’t wait to get on the field with them.”

Oxford is watching. And in September, when the Tigers arrive at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, it all becomes a football game again.

That part, at least, everyone agrees on.