From Monday through Wednesday this week, I was a guest on four sports talk shows.
Naturally, the topic was the annual SEC Football Media Days, which started on Monday in Tampa and ended on Thursday. Sixteen head coaches, 48 players and around 1,000 media members mostly wearing their latest free swag golf shirts.
On each show, the first question to me was “How do you think Lane Kiffin is going to be when he speaks on Thursday?”
I had a different answer for every show.
Show 1: “As I understand it, he’s going to wear a purple suit with gold pinstripes, a glittering gold fedora and walk to the main media room lectern at slow pimp’s pace.”
Show 2: “Supposedly, his entry music is `Disco Inferno’ and his opening remark will be “Media homies, let’s burn this mutha down.”
Show 3: “He plans to wear an Ole Miss coaching outfit but will strip it all off revealing his LSU threads by the time he reaches the lectern.”
Show 4: “Rumor has it that Ed Orgeron, another former Ole Miss and LSU head coach, will carry Kiffin to the lectern via piggyback. Then, in a revised Ole Miss cheer, they’ll scream “Hotty Pooty, rooty tooty, Ti-gahs gonna beat your booty booty.”
The continued fascination about LSU’s new head football coach is truly entertaining. His social media prowess – verbal jabs, pictures from clandestine locations, etc. – have made him almost a mythical figure.
But he isn’t. He’s a 51-year-old guy, now paid $13 million annually, who has two conference titles (in Conference USA) in 14 years as NCAA FBS field boss and yet he lives rent-free in so many people’s heads.
Like the butthurt Ole Miss fanbase, which has had only two head football coaches successful enough to be swiped by other schools – Tommy Tuberville to Auburn and Kiffin to LSU.
They raised Kiffin ahead of Tuberville in the Oxford Public Enemy No. 1 standings, and won’t let go. There’s this one highly-annoyed gray-haired cousin of Colonel Reb on social media who has latched onto Kiffin like a junkyard dog to a T-bone.
The national sports media, whose whole job is to right every wrong, continuously ripped Kiffin enough to awake Republican Senator Ted Cruz from a slumber. He made sure there was a rule in the proposed Protest College Sports act to prohibit schools from hiring head coaches until after the end of their seasons.
All because Kiffin exited Ole Miss last year for LSU before the College Football Playoffs. Brian Kelly did the same thing when he left Notre Dame for LSU in December 2021. Other coaches have done it for decades.
The screwed-up college football calendar, with an early December signing period and early January transfer portal opening makes it impossible for any school to wait and hire a coach.
Yet, it’s Kiffin’s fault. Just a cold, heartless narcissistic orb 24 hours/365 days a year.
“What happened with Lane Kiffin was really unfair to student-athletes,” Cruz said. “I just think that was bad for the system.”
What I really told the sports talk radio hosts was that Kiffin will deliver a Gettysburg Address-length opening statement in the main media room to leave less time for questions.
Maybe Kiffin thought maybe with fewer questions that reporters would have just enough time to ask about his team, or his quarterback situation.
Nope.
Kiffin was the only head coach in the four-day event to not field questions about his players in the 30-minute main media room appearance. Nobody asked him.
He had time to answer four questions, which produced two revelations.
The first is he doesn’t plan to change his transfer portal-heavy recruiting philosophy anytime soon.
“High school (recruits) can leave after year one when they don’t play as much as they like,” Kiffin said. “Or they want more money, or they do play and then they want more money. That’s why we built and will continue so much until they balance out the system, and they balance out how players’ contracts work.”
The second is developing a Teflon-coating to ignore his haters.
“I made a challenging decision in change (to move to LSU),” he said. “I thought I could find a way for everybody to understand. Now as I look back later on, that was never going to happen.
“As I get older and I go through things and losing both parents . . . some of the things that we put importance on, we worry about . . . I can’t be so concerned about little things and what people say and this. You got to make decisions; you got to go with them. You do things, and you make really good decisions, and you make poor decisions.”
That’s some Zen vibes flowing. Maybe Cuz of Colonel Reb might take that advice before he strokes out mid-rant.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com