Lane Kiffin Sweepstakes

[Apptiger]

Traditionally speaking, both LSU and UF are better than Ole Miss. But we aren't living in a traditional time. Just look at this year, and the entire time he has been at Ole Miss, Lane has more wins than LSU or UF coaches and he is beloved. If he stays at Ole Miss, he likely gets a statute and is ultimately the winningest coach in their history. At UF and LSU, it is Natty or bust. Heck, even if you win a Natty at UF you don't get a statute. There are only 3, Spurrier, Weurfell, Tebow and they all won Heismans and a Natty (Spurrier got the Natty as a coach), there is not statute for Meyer and he isn't even liked or missed down there despite winning 2 nattys for them. Gainesville is actually a great college town but the expectation of UF fans is a tad bit unrealistic, they ran Dan Mullen out of town and he holds the third highest winning percentage of all UF coaches. He was doing really good, hit a bad 3-5 stretch and found himself out of a job. That type of stuff won't ever happen at Ole Miss, he can continue to win 10 games in a row and be the toast of the town. If I were him I would stay put.

Mullen got let go at UF because he hated recruiting and avoided it. It started to show. His best years there were his first few and with players recruited by others. The program was on a downward slide and they decided 13-10 over his last two years and 5-6 his last year was enough.
There was a lot going on with Urban behind the scenes. I won't go into details mostly because they are not public and unverified but.. Winning can compensate for a lot.

There is a lot of political type stuff at LSU but overall I think LSU would be a better job. Before Brian Kelly, the last three coaches LSU had won Natty's. Pretty sure Kiffin is a better coach than Les Miles and Orgeron. It has taken hall of fame caliber coaches to win it at Florida. He doesn't have as much in state recruiting competition in LA either.

Kiffin is young, he would have a chance to be THE legend at LSU. I think exceeding Saban would appeal to Kiffin but then again, he has matured.
Kiffin seems to like pro ball and could bolt from LSU like he has from everywhere else. He is already a "legend" in Oxford but most think he has taken them as far as anyone can.

It has been interesting to watch, we'll have news in the next week or so if the Ole Miss ultimatum story is true.

That recruiting angle was a lazy excuse in the media, go back and look at his recruiting classes (ranked 14, 9,8,12), all on par or better than with Napier (19,13,14,10) who they brought in to recruit. Also, Mullen didn't have the football center when he was recruiting and that is a huge bonus because that thing is sweet. The media created the "hates recruiting" narrative from a frustrated Mullen, when he was upset after the last Georgia loss, and someone asked him about recruiting and he flippantly said something to the effect that 'recruiting was for the off season and they were still playing football'. Kirby jumped on that, his interview followed Mullens, and said that he recruited everyday and the media ran with it and said Mullen hated recruiting, it just wasn't true. Yes, it was a down year and half (ever since the LSU shoe episode) for Mullen and people were especially upset because everyone thought he should play Richardson and he wasn't playing, he didn't play him bc despite being an awesome athlete, he just isn't that great at QB especially at that point (I think everyone has seen that to be the case). In 2020 he was 8-4,coming off an 11-2 season that they played Bama for the SEC championship, he then lost most of those guys off the team and in 2020 the transfer portal wasn't in full swing so replacing guys took longer. In 2021 he was fired at 5-6. Interesting enough, Napier's best season was 8-5 (his only winning season) in 2024 and Strickland let him stay on after that. But the fact is that Mullen is still the third winningest percentile coach in UF history and they canned him.

I know a lot of the issues with Meyer, he was a jerk and not good to anyone including large boosters, alumni, former QB club presidents, kids at his football camp (my son included in that list) the list goes on and on (among other things). Like you, I have kids that went to UF (4 have at least 1 degree from there), plus my wife, brother in law, father in law, and nephew. Being down here, I am far closer to the UF program than App State's program.

I agree that LSU is the best of the jobs, but when that Governor opens his mouth it sure doesn't make it sound like a place a top coach wants to go and deal with. I think both jobs are "better" on paper but he has it rolling at Ole Miss and quality of life has to mean something at some point. He is back with his wife, watches his son play QB for his high school on Friday nights, gets to interact with his daughter who is a junior at Ole Miss, and really avoids any major news outlets unless he wants to be on. Not sure either LSU or UF will give him the same type of quality of life and that is coming from a guy who paid UF lots of money and roots for them every weekend.

Interesting also that Kiffin has no rebuked the report of an ultimatum given to him by the AD. I first heard that as a theory from Josh Pate about what he would do if he was the Ole Miss AD. I think some irresponsible members of the media, took that idea and ran with it like it was news instead of the commentary that it was. Either way, Kiffin hasn't been given an ultimatum.

100% on Richardson, had forgotten about the recruiting smokescreen. Think they were trying to justify the downward trend.
Kiffin said today there is no ultimatum, it was fake news. Now they are calling it a "deadline" lol.

Forgot your were in west Florida, Bradenton area? I was in Lakeland for over 30 years. My youngest son has undergrad and masters from UF but has been done a long time. I'm so old my grandson's wife works at Shands now. I was never a Gator fan until I spent a lot of time up there. Son's dorm was behind the O'Connell Center across from the stadium. That and Steve Spurrier (told you it was a while back) handed my son an academic scholarship from the Gator club. I was blown away and unbelievably jealous. App didn't have all athletic scholarships fully funded and they had so much money their boosters were handing out academic scholarships. Wonder if that's still a practice or is the money is now gone to NIL?

The politics at LSU is their liability. IF you are winning it's a non factor. If you are losing, and doing Urban stuff on steroids they will fire you even if they owe 54MIL