HOW FUN IS COLLEGE FOOTBALL? LANE KIFFIN COULD WIN THE NATIONAL TITLE
He has found religion and hot yoga in Mississippi, where he hasn’t had a drink since 2021, and if he once was mocked throughout football, a championship might inspire a literary movement in The Grove
This January, Lane Kiffin will celebrate his fourth year of sobriety. But about a week earlier, he might rejoice in a national football championship at Ole Miss, once known as the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where tailgating at The Grove has reveled with the Mannings but only claimed one co-title back in 1960. That segment of the state is known for literature.
Can you imagine the fiction that might turn real if Kiffin wins it all? Would John Grisham keep defending a death-row inmate or detect the joy of a man mocked for alienating Nick Saban, ridiculed when he was fired on an LAX tarmac and still unable to stop teasing other coaches online? Lane doesn’t need booze anymore, watching his weight drop from an anaconda who ate a deer — his line — to a mover and shaker who wants a piece of the 12-team playoff tournament.
Don’t doubt him. He has a Heisman-caliber quarterback, Jaxson Dart, who can beat Oklahoma and Georgia at home and win at LSU. He can win the SEC title game when at least five other conference teams could join him in the national party zone. What if he knocks off Alabama, without Saban? What if he rambles through the rounds and plays Ohio State on Jan. 20 in Atlanta? It’s not implausible, especially in the crazy loose-leaf folders of his sport.
He has found prayer and bible studies and hot yoga. He writes in journals when he hasn’t liked journalists, including ESPN voice Paul Finebaum. “For those of you that may have something holding you back from being the best version of yourself, I encourage you that you can do it!” Kiffin said. “It may seem simple but not easy, but it definitely will be worth it. We only have one shot at this life on earth. Go be the best you can be.”
If he once used social media entirely to pull pranks, he reads tweets from people such as author Brianna Wiest, who urged him to wake up at 6 a.m. “I thought it was really cool. Maybe there’s someone out there who needs some motivation and is going through some stuff,” he said. “The ability to use the platform as a head coach, on Twitter with that many people, is really valuable. I think we all go through things. I’ve been through a lot, I think they’re well-documented — you know, divorce, firings. So now being here, you kinda get out of that world and some things change. I didn’t think I’d be watching a Nicholas Sparks movie last night, with six girls there sitting on the couch and a dog. So I guess maybe things have changed.”
He found a church for his family, including his children, who are living with him. Of God, he said, “I can’t believe he didn’t give up on me.” Kiffin drank, ate and blobbed out. He was absorbed in out-scheming opponents offensively, a chore he performs better than most strategists on the planet. Now, he’s into having fun with his players and trying pickleball with Dart, who transferred from USC, where Kiffin was fired at the airport after a loss in 2013. He is taking the program to dreamy places, where Kirby Smart and Kalen DeBoer are nervous in a league that also features a certain Arch Manning at Texas and a quarterback named Nico Iamaleava at Tennessee.
How much fun is Kiffin having? At a media conference, he didn’t care that Coca-Cola is a sponsor of his program. Heaving the container into a dumpster, he said, “Does anybody drink Coke? One hundred and thirty percent of your sugar for the entire day is in this one bottle.”
The other day, Wake Forest called and dropped a bombshell. The bosses were so impressed by Ole Miss in a 40-6 loss that they want out of next year’s rematch. The athletic director ran away, which was juice for Kiffin. “John Currie said, ‘We're not playing next year,’ and bought out of the game. So I thought that was a good message for our players — that somebody would want to pay money not to play them,” he said. “Says a lot about where our program is right now.”
Doesn’t it? “That's rarely ever done,” Kiffin said. “It puts us at a big disadvantage. It obviously wasn't appreciated very much, them putting us in that situation. Now we've got to go find somebody and most people are scheduled up. And even when you find somebody, you've got to pay them. It's kind of an unwritten rule not to do it, actually.”
It’s satirical when we say Lane Kiffin was an unwritten rule himself. Without Saban, he would have been on alcohol missions with Steve Sarkisian. They were problem kids when they gathered at Alabama as assistants. Fascinating how both are in the running for a national title, with Sarkisian ranked No. 1 at Texas — thanks to Saban, who will broadcast the biggest games. Florida could shower Kiffin with the largest contract in the business. Will Nick be thanked? Yes, by both men. But not until Kiffin makes fun of someone else. That was him, goofing on LSU’s Brian Kelly and Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz for dancing and playing music with recruits.
Only this time, with a $9-million-a-year contract through 2029 and the NFL starting to look closely again, he is respected by all. God didn’t give up on him.
Why? The smart ass turned into a smart guy.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.