To understand Lane Kiffin's rise at Mississippi, you have to follow along with Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s music wields the power to lay bare a listener’s soul. To true Swifties, Taylor isn’t just singing. Her lyrics resonate.
Even Ole Miss’ 49-year-old football coach sees a bit of himself in those lyrics.
Consider Lane Kiffin aSwiftie. He appreciates her music, and although he didn’t embrace Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” with as much vigor as her past work, one song hit home.
“My favorite song would be, ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,’” Kiffin told me recently. He said he sees parallels between his life and the “boy” in Swift’s song.
In “My Boy,” Swift sings: “My boy only breaks his favorite toys. I'm queen of sandcastles he destroys.”
As Swift’s song continues, the music icon hits these punchy notes: “There was danger in the heat of my touch. He saw forever so he smashed it up.”
Snicker, if you like, while you consider Kiffin hearing himself within these lyrics. He’ll permit you that laugh, but he won’t deny reality.
“It might be similar to my life’s path,” Kiffin said during our wide-ranging interview.
Kiffin once was the boy wonder, the mercurial coach of the Oakland Raiders and later at the University of Tennessee, with the beautiful wife and a young family. The seams of that life came apart. He sped out of Knoxville while it flamed in his rear-view mirror. Southern California fired him from his dream job – on a tarmac, no less – in a professional lowlight. His marriage ended in divorce.
While Swift’s song lasts just more than three minutes, Kiffin’s tale didn’t end smashed in L.A. He rebuilt. He’s winning like never before.
Q&AWhat Lane Kiffin thinks of Taylor Swift, Nick Saban retirement, Ole Miss hopes
Kiffin, entering Year 5 at Ole Miss, armed himself with what he considers the best roster he’s ever had. The Rebels dine on success like it hasn’t tasted since the early 1960s.
These are new waters for Kiffin. He's never stayed at a head coaching job for this long.
Kiffin says he adopted a mentality of “radical acceptance” and an evolved perspective built on the idea that you never can truly know yourself until you’ve been torn apart and forced to put yourself back together.
“Most of my rock bottoms were my own fault, my own self-destruction,” Kiffin says, “but I now see that having to rebuild that in my personal life and in my career … in that process, I really got to actually figure myself out and learn myself, because I had to build it.”
Enough broken toys. Check out this puzzle Kiffin assembled at Ole Miss.
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How Lane Kiffin used ‘free agency’ to upgrade Ole Miss
Kiffin discusses roster assembly almost as if he’s an NFL general manager. That reflects the truth of college football in 2024. Call it what it is: Teams use NIL deals, peddled via collectives, to attract and retain players. All that’s missing are the NFL’s employment contracts and salary caps.
Kiffin and Ole Miss are quite good at attracting talented transfers, and he infrequently loses his top players to the portal. Star running back Quinshon Judkins became a rare exception when he transferred to Ohio State after last season. Losing Judkins stings. But, his exit off the NIL bankroll freed cap space – to use an NFL term – to fortify other areas.
See how that NFL GM mindset applies?
Kiffin became an early adopter of using analytics to guide in-game strategy. He applies similar logic to roster building.
Would he rather have Player A for X number of dollars, or would Ole Miss be better served using $X to amass several good players who address needs?
“In the NFL, you’ve got to make decisions about how much to pay a player versus the other amount of players that you can get for that same price at other positions,” Kiffin explained. “I’m making that as a general statement about what they do in the NFL and would just say that in college football, you have to make those type of decisions now.”
In the four seasons since Ole Miss hired Kiffin, Alabama and Georgia are the only SEC teams to have compiled a better winning percentage than Kiffin’s Rebels.
Still, Kiffin knew his program required adjustment after last season’s 52-17 loss at Georgia. The Bulldogs manhandled Ole Miss. The Rebels needed to upgrade their offensive and defensive lines.
Hello, transfer portal.
Kiffin assembled the nation’s No. 1-ranked transfer class. Four offensive linemen and three defensive linemen are among that haul. If the Rebels become contenders for the SEC crown, it’ll be because of upgrades on the lines of scrimmage.
“The hope was, especially after the Georgia game, we need to build our offensive line better – (get) longer,” Kiffin said. “And we need to get bigger in the front seven. So, we went out aggressively in free agency, if I can just say what it is. We went out in free agency to attack that.”
Six transfers came from SEC schools. That includes four defensive additions, highlighted by defensive linemen Walter Nolen (Texas A&M) and Princely Umanmielen (Florida). The talent influx gives the Rebels an opportunity for its best defense in Kiffin’s tenure.
Plus, several Mississippi players who could’ve opted for the NFL draft returned for another season.
“They wanted to do something special,” Kiffin says of the veterans’ return.
What does “something special” look like?
Playoff qualification? A trip to Atlanta? National championship contention?
Kiffin won’t define concrete goals. He’s one of those “process” guys.
But, even Kiffin admits: “There’s a ton of experience.”
With experience and talent come lofty expectations – and the threat of a “rat poison” overdose.
Why Nick Saban told Lane Kiffin to give Ole Miss a warning
Nick Saban called Kiffin last week. Saban will be an ESPN analyst on “College GameDay,” and he rang Kiffin to polish his Ole Miss knowledge. Consider it preseason homework for the GOAT’s new gig.
“He’s attacking his new job,” Kiffin said.
While Kiffin had Saban’s ear, he asked his former boss for advice on how to deal with the unprecedented expectations his team faces.
Keep fresh in players’ minds the idea of “rat poison,” Saban advised. That’s the phrase Saban coined for when media heap praise upon a team.
“He said, ‘Remind those players about rat poison,’” Kiffin said, as he recalled Saban’s advice. “‘Remind them that those people that are writing that stuff on the internet about how great they are, ... it's probably some big fat guy in his underwear who doesn't know (crap) about football.’”
Kiffin holds Saban in the highest esteem. He feels gratitude that Saban hired him to be Alabama’s offensive coordinator after USC had sacked him in 2013. The benefits were mutual. Kiffin galvanized Alabama’s offense, and his three-year stint with Saban reignited his career.
Immediately after Saban retired in January, some Alabama fans positioned Kiffin atop their wish list as the ideal successor. Alabama focused its search elsewhere. It hired Kalen DeBoer, who had just taken Washington to the national championship game.
Did Kiffin want to replace Saban? He didn’t directly answer that question. Instead, Kiffin referenced advice his dad, former coach Monte Kiffin, offered him years ago.
Kiffin’s told me this story before. The elder Kiffin’s advice to his son went like this: “Always look at who you follow as a head coach. It’s a major, major part to your success, because you’ll always be compared to the coach before.”
Kiffin admits he “certainly didn’t listen” to Monte’s advice in his younger days, when he succeeded Phillip Fulmer at Tennessee and Pete Carroll at USC. Both were legends.
In Kiffin’s eyes, Saban will be the toughest act to follow, “because you’re always going to be compared” to the incomparable.
Following Bryan Harsin would’ve been a different kettle of fish. Kiffin emerged as a candidate for Auburn during its coaching search after the 2022 season. Kiffin flirted with Auburn but stayed put. Ole Miss awarded him a richer deal. Auburn hired Hugh Freeze.
Where might Auburn be, entering Year 2 of a Kiffin regime? Kiffin won’t let his mind go there. Instead, he answers that question like this:
“I wouldn’t see my daughter every day, which I do now,” Kiffin said of Landry, his oldest daughter, an Ole Miss sophomore. “… So, that would answer that question. What’s going to matter later on in life? Which one are you going to value more?”
As Kiffin embraces “radical acceptance,” I’ll add this radical thought: Kiffin didn’t need Auburn, not when he’s built Ole Miss into a playoff contender.
Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss football have alchemy
Kiffin surprised even himself by staying at Ole Miss this long. Analytics would say a chic coach like Kiffin, with his 34-15 record with the Rebels, would’ve parlayed his success into a different job by now.
Kiffin’s success occurred, in part, because he stayed. He put down roots in Oxford long enough to build something. His 11 victories last season marked a career best.
“It’s really been amazing,” Kiffin said. “If we would’ve had this conversation 4½ years ago, I think most people wouldn’t have bet on” him still being at Ole Miss.
To some detractors, Kiffin always will be the coach who flopped with the Raiders, spurned Tennessee and got fired from his dream job. That narrative discounts that, for some people, past decisions help them wise up.
“I now believe that until you have really had your life, whether it’s personal life or job, whether you’ve had one or both of those torn apart, to where you have to go rebuild it, until you do that, you really don’t know yourself,” Kiffin said.
Even an evolved Lane remains Lane. He needles adversaries. (Be on guard, Eliah Drinkwitz and Brian Kelly.) He’s still susceptible to impulses. Heck, he’s probably crafting his next pithy tweet as I type this. He’s enraptured by his own cleverness.
But he also professes to possess more self-awareness than he once did.
The Kiffin of his 30s shot in like a comet and flamed out as quickly as he arrived. The Kiffin of his 40s reassembled his life and career.
Kiffin will turn 50 next spring. What’s in store for his next decade?
“I don’t break as many favorite toys – just kidding,” Kiffin said. “Just kidding.”
Or, he’s not kidding. He didn't break or forsake Ole Miss. He nurtured it.
For much of Swift’s latest album, she sings of love’s fickleness and failed relationships with toy breakers, but she pivots in “The Alchemy,” a love song with a more hopeful message.
Ole Miss hired Kiffin in a moment of need. Kiffin says he needed Ole Miss more. A brilliant match, they are. Who is he to fight the alchemy?
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's SEC Columnist. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.