Lane Kiffin, one of the brightest minds in college football, is the new head coach of the LSU Tigers.<\/p>\n
The 50-year-old has accepted LSU’s reported offer of a seven-year contract worth more than $90 million.<\/p>\n
An introductory press conference will take place on Monday.<\/p>\n
Kiffin is leaving as the head coach of Ole Miss as the Rebels are set to host\u00a0their first College Football playoff game in three weeks. The divorce between\u00a0him and Ole Miss is messy as Kiffin is bringing most of his offensive staff from\u00a0the Rebels and one report says he will retain LSU defensive coordinator Blake\u00a0Baker and add former LSU head coach Ed Orgeron, most likely as defensive\u00a0line coach.<\/p>\n
Kiffin is leaving as the head coach of Ole Miss as the Rebels are set to host their first College Football playoff game in three weeks.<\/p>\n
He will take over an LSU program that just completed a 7-5 regular season with a 17-13 loss to Oklahoma. The Tigers\u00a0failed to\u00a0score more than 25 points against an FBS opponent, so a big job awaits Kiffin to fix an offense that ranks 98th\u00a0in total offense.<\/p>\n
Ole Miss ranks 2nd\u00a0in total offense, a major\u00a0reason why\u00a0Kiffin\u00a0emerged\u00a0as LSU\u2019s top target after dismissing Brian Kelly following an awful loss to Texas A&M on October 25th.<\/p>\n
Not only does Kiffin know how to construct great offenses,\u00a0he has\u00a0adapted quickly to the new world of college football, where NIL funding and finding talent in the transfer portal have become essential.<\/p>\n
Kiffin has had a long and winding road to get to this point, and he hopped from one city to another as his late dad, Monte Kiffin, is considered one of the best defensive coordinators in NFL history, helping Tampa Bay to a Super Bowl victory in the 2002 season.<\/p>\n
Monte Kiffin also coached at the college level,\u00a0including at\u00a0Nebraska, where Lane Kiffin was born in 1975. Lane Kiffin was a three-sport athlete at Bloomington Jefferson High School in Minnesota. Monte was a linebackers coach and a defensive coordinator for the Vikings during that time.<\/p>\n
Lane Kiffin played his college ball at Fresno State. He was a quarterback for the Bulldogs from 1994 to 1996.<\/p>\n
His coaching career began as a student assistant at Fresno from 1997 to 1998.<\/p>\n
Kiffin started to become a household name in the mid-2000s as he was the offensive coordinator for the USC Trojans in 2005 and 2006. That 2005 USC team produced\u00a0numerous\u00a0school records, averaging 49 points per game and\u00a0579 yards\u00a0per game.<\/p>\n
In 2004, when Kiffin was passing game coordinator, quarterback Matt Leinart won the Heisman Trophy, and running back Reggie Bush\u00a0won it\u00a0the following season.<\/p>\n
During his stint at USC, the Trojans won two national championships, a shared title with LSU in 2003, and the 2004 title\u00a0was eventually vacated\u00a0because of NCAA violations.<\/p>\n
Kiffin\u2019s success at USC led to his first head coaching job.<\/p>\n
At that time, Raiders owner Al Davis hired a 31-year-old Kiffin to be Oakland\u2019s head coach.<\/p>\n
However, his stint in Oakland lasted only 20 games, a 5-15 record. Davis fired Kiffin with cause, calling him a \u201cdisgrace to the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kiffin quickly landed on his feet as Tennessee hired the 33-year-old to be the next head coach of the Volunteers, replacing Phillip Fulmer<\/p>\n
In 2009, Kiffin led the Vols to a 7-6 record, a two-win improvement over the previous year.<\/p>\n
However, Kiffin only lasted one season in Knoxville. In January of 2010, he took the USC head coaching job to replace Pete Carroll, who left for the Seattle Seahawks.<\/p>\n
Kiffin\u2019s sudden departure caused the students at the University of Tennessee to riot as\u00a0several\u00a0small fires broke out.<\/p>\n
Kiffin was the head coach at USC for three-plus seasons. In 2011, the Trojans won ten games and finished sixth in the AP poll. But in 2013, Kiffin\u00a0was fired\u00a0after the Trojans lost their first two Pac-12 games.\u00a0He was dismissed by USC athletics director Pat Haden\u00a0following a 62-41 loss to Arizona State.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0firing\u00a0happened in the middle of the night after the team returned home to Los\u00a0Angeles\u00a0and Kiffin\u00a0was left\u00a0stranded at the Los Angeles International Airport, not allowed to take the team bus back to the USC campus.<\/p>\n
Kiffin\u2019s reputation\u00a0was tarnished, so he joined the Nick Saban Coaching Reclamation Project. It was a chance for him to learn from the greatest college football coach and, at the same time, rebuild his reputation.<\/p>\n
Saban hired Kiffin as Alabama\u2019s offensive coordinator in 2014.<\/p>\n
That season, he was a finalist for the Broyles Award, given annually to the nation\u2019s top college football assistant coach.<\/p>\n
In 2015, the Crimson Tide won a national championship with Kiffin calling plays.<\/p>\n
Alabama was on the verge of winning another national championship in the 2016 season when Kiffin accepted the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic. Saban did not want Kiffin as the OC of the Crimson Tide in the national championship game, and he\u00a0was relieved\u00a0of his duties.<\/p>\n
In three seasons at FAU, Kiffin won two Conference USA Championships and left the Owls with a 26-13 record. He was also known for promotional videos he produced, where he was less than enthused when encouraging FAU fans to buy tickets and support the team.<\/p>\n
Kiffin\u2019s first season at Ole Miss was in 2020, and the Rebels went 5-5, but in the next five seasons, the Rebels won at least 10 games four times.<\/p>\n
This season, Ole Miss won a school-record 11 games and will\u00a0likely host\u00a0a College Football Playoff game, and he did it with a former Division II quarterback, Trinidad Chambliss, leading the offense.<\/p>\n
As part of the Lane Kiffin experience, the players dunk a basketball on a hoop set up on the sidelines after scoring touchdowns or creating big plays on defense.<\/p>\n
He is known for trolling and taking jabs at others on social media. Even his dog, \u201cJuice Kiffin,\u201d has 70,000 followers on \u201cX.\u201d Juice is on the sidelines during games, and he has run on the field to retrieve the kicking tee after kick-offs.<\/p>\n
His reputation and credibility take a hit again, leaving a football team before they play their first college football playoff game for an LSU job that will give him a better chance at recruiting the best players.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0as long as\u00a0he wins in Baton Rouge, LSU fans will ignore the haters and fully invest themselves in the Lane Kiffin experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lane Kiffin, one of the brightest minds in college football, is the new head coach of the LSU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-319079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}