LSU head coach Lane Kiffin continues to stir up controversy with seemingly everything he does. Still, his team was one of the most impressive in Week 1.
LSU coach Lane Kiffin knows exactly what he’s doing.
He leans into the character he’s become (or created) — college football’s preeminent villain.
It’s the conscious decision to turn back to ESPN’s Holly Rowe after his halftime interview Saturday night, up 31-3 on Clemson, and quip, “Imagine if we had pro players.”
Just perfection — a chef’s kiss, as the saying goes.
After engulfing the sport in controversy and five-alarm furor last week with his push to activate two players who were in NFL training camps earlier this summer, before ultimately relenting in the 11th hour after legal action from the SEC, Kiffin simply couldn’t resist the opportunity to lean further into the chaos he created.
Like The Joker appreciating his carnage across Gotham.
Kiffin then had the gall to claim afterward he didn’t know it would make the broadcast …
“That’s just my personality, it is what it is,” he said later after what was ultimately a statement-making 51-10 win Saturday night. “And then I said, ‘Did you actually put that on air?’ She said ‘Yes.’ So what’s the difference — everybody hates you, they can’t hate you that much more. So there you go — you got another line.”
Of course it made the broadcast — it was said into a live mic in front of a live camera!
Lane Kiffin Well Aware Of Public Perception
On that note, Kiffin will gladly be the first to point out — or rather, reinforce — how he is perceived. It’s all part of the performance.
He had done it earlier in the day as well during his morning appearance on “College GameDay,” commiserating with ESPN’s Pat McAfee about both being divisive high-profile personalities.
“It’s what I’ve really appreciated: our friendship this week, your guidance with me about, you know, because between you and me, we’re about the two most hated people there are,” Kiffin said.
Just as it’s a conscious decision by Kiffin to shoot a jumper at a basketball hoop — that was for whatever reason on LSU’s sideline — during the game with his Tigers piling on the points against Clemson.
Or to deliver a dose of his characteristic hubris after the game, saying that LSU’s own scout team scored more points against its defense in the team’s “mock game” than Clemson did.
It wasn’t enough just embarrassing the once-mighty Clemson Tigers and one of the game’s most accomplished coaches, Dabo Swinney, on the field Saturday … it needed to be rubbed in their face as well.
Not everybody enjoys the routine. The SEC sure doesn’t seem to be laughing right now, with ESPN and Yahoo! reporting that the conference has amended its federal lawsuit against LSU (filed last week seeking an injunction against the use of the pro players in question) to allow for the possibility of expelling the Tigers from the league.
(It’ll never, ever come to that, but it sure sends a message in the loudest possible way.)
But Kiffin’s corner in college football is exactly the one he wants to occupy and the one he continues to protect with his words and actions — and, honestly, it’s actually great for the sport. It is!
Good For College Football
This is an entertainment business, ultimately, and villains are essential to compelling narratives.
But Kiffin is also more than that, of course, which is why the sideshow routine commands the spotlight it does. It wouldn’t matter much if he wasn’t so significant.
He’s genuinely damn good at coaching football and building up programs — on the shortest of short lists of true difference-makers in the sport.
Forget the early Kiffin stumbles and setbacks — the ugly firing from the Raiders, bolting Tennessee after one season for USC, famously being fired from the Trojans at LAX after a flight back from a loss, etc.
He helped convince Nick Saban to modernize and open up Alabama’s offense, playing an underrated role in Saban’s legendary career and the Crimson Tide’s prolonged dominance even after Kiffin was let go (unceremoniously, of course, before the national championship game to cap the 2016 season because he had signed on to become FAU’s head coach while trying to balance both jobs).
Kiffin’s Ole Miss Revival
He went 26-13 in three years at FAU to, against the odds, restore his stock enough to land another shot at leading an SEC program, at Ole Miss.
Kiffin then took the Rebels to their highest heights in six decades while going 55-19 in six seasons and building a legitimate national title contender where many others had failed. … Only to, of course, part ways in the least amicable of ways while taking the job at rival LSU ahead of Ole Miss’ first College Football Playoff appearance, with the school refusing to let him coach out the postseason run.
The “of course” is key here because such components are just built into the Kiffin Experience.
He’s likely going to prove he was worth all the money and all the drama and restore LSU to the top of the SEC and college football again, but he’ll also just as likely leave the program — whenever that time comes — unceremoniously for whatever reason and move onto the next chapter of one of the most fascinating coaching careers in college football history.
Assuming any less would seem naive.
(Maybe he wants to return to Alabama if Kalen DeBoer can’t turn things around and show that he was the rightful successor to Saban. Maybe he wants to rewrite history and let a desperate USC, if Lincoln Riley can’t salvage his own tenure there, come crawling back to him with an opportunity to stick it to the long-gone administration that fired him. Who can ever be sure what The Joker is thinking?)
What Comes Next For Lane Kiffin and LSU?
Or maybe Kiffin realizes that he finally has it all in Baton Rouge — the full attention of the college football world like never before, the ability to recruit and fund a national championship-caliber roster (he may already have one in Year 1). And all the while, the invincibility to needle the NCAA, constern his own conference, compel his critics and ruffle his rivals like no other as long as he keeps winning (which he will).
The only certainty is that however it plays out for Kiffin at LSU (or beyond), it will be entertaining and drive eyes, ire, intrigue and outrage in his direction.
Love him or hate him — and he probably doesn’t have a preference either way — Kiffin is good for college football.
He may be the antithesis of Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, college football’s new feel-good superhero, but that’s the point.
After all, Batman wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining without The Joker.
