Ole Miss is experiencing the Lane Kiffin Tax
As the honeymoon period wanes, the downside of Lane Kiffin being the Rebels' head coach is becoming more evident
From the moment Lane Kiffin hopped off a university jet on December 8, 2019 to a crowd of Ole Miss fans — as one of the fans handed him his infant son — on the tarmac of the Oxford-University airport, his tenure as the Rebels’ head football coach has been a raging success.
At the time, Ole Miss was somewhat aimlessly wandering through the process of rebuilding its football program after it was wrecked by Hugh Freeze and a half-decade long NCAA investigation. Matt Luke, the man originally appointed to be the architect of this rebuild, was unqualified for the job despite being a Mississippi native, an ‘Ole Miss guy’ and someone who played an invaluable role in controlling the initial damage of a program teetering on self-destruction during his year as interim head coach in 2017. The Ole Miss brand was pretty bland. The program had no identity outside of a meaningless ‘Mississippi Made’ slogan and some young, talented pieces on the offensive side of the ball. The program needed an injection of life — a splash, as Keith Carter dubbed it at the time of the hire. People drank beer on a Monday at a lunchtime press conference inside The Pavilion. The hire served its purpose. It made a splash.
The Lane Kiffin Tax
Kiffin’s honeymoon period at Ole Miss, if you want to call it that — the span of time in which a coach can do no wrong, are the greatest thing to happen to X program since Y year and are building a machine that’s built to last — was longer than what is typical in this high-money, higher-stakes modern college football world. It was prolonged, of course, by winning. Kiffin had a stretch of 20 wins in 24 games, a clip of success the Rebels have not seen in a generation. Winning cures everything in the college football ecosystem. Well, almost everything, as winning can sometimes come with a cost.
No one likes taxes, outside of the nerds at the IRS. What Ole Miss is currently experiencing is the Lane Kiffin Tax. What is that, exactly? It’s all of the things that put Kiffin in this position in the first place in the latest chapter of an utterly bizarre career that hardly mirrors the linear trajectory most successful coaches ascend from— at an SEC West program in his fourth stint as a head coach at 45 years old. It’s the somewhat self-absorbed, introverted personality that results in strained relationships, never knowing exactly what he’s thinking when it comes to the current place he occupies, his future and his inability to commit to a job, a program and a community. It’s the strangely-picked battles he chooses to fight in the media. It’s the Twitter persona not aligning with his actual personality.
The Kiffin Tax visibly set in after the final whistle of the Rebels’ crushing home defeat to Alabama ten days ago. Last week brought with it a slew of rumors, reports and conflict as Kiffin’s candidacy for the Auburn head coaching job took shape. The Tigers made it known that he was their No. 1 target. From there, varying reports on the two schools’ NIL funds, Kiffin’s interest in the job and a new contract offered by Ole Miss consumed most of the rest of the week — all while the football team prepped for a rigorous road contest against a .500 Arkansas club as the chance of compiling back-to-back 10-win seasons for the first time in a generation was still within reach.
Would all of this be a distraction? I think that answer was always obvious. The better question was how much of a distraction it would be. The proof was in the proverbial pudding as the Rebels were destroyed by a middling Arkansas team. They trailed 35-6 at halftime. For the first time in the Lane Kiffin era, Ole Miss looked distracted, lethargic and somewhat unprepared. I am usually hesitant with the latter criticism because I am not in the building and don’t pretend to know everything that goes into game planning for an SEC opponent on a weekly basis. But a week after the Ole Miss defense held Alabama to 108 yards rushing at just three yards per rush, Arkansas ran wild on the defense, to the tune of 335 yards at 7.8 yards per carry. Razorbacks head coach Sam Pittman made it pretty clear throughout the week that quarterback K.J. Jefferson would return from injury and play in the game. Running back Rocket Sanders has been the Hogs’ offensive buoy for most of the year. Ole Miss couldn’t have been surprised as to what Arkansas was going to do. Maybe it’s as simple as this defense not being good against the run and that the Alabama game was an anomaly? But the Rebels were down 35-6 at halftime to a team that lost to Liberty.
It’s impossible to prove whether or not the rumors regarding Kiffin and Auburn were a distraction for the team, but you can mine some evidence from the postgame press conference if you read in between the lines. Quarterback Jaxson Dart was asked the question point blank.
“You hear it. It’s out there,” Dart said. “But I think our guys do a good job of trying to stay focused and control what we can control.”
He was then asked another question about whether that was difficult for him, personally, to do, seeing that he transferred here to come play for Kiffin and this staff. Dart looked down and said: “For me, I am just trying to control what I can control and finish out this year.”
I understand that these kids are trained to say as little as possible and not create headlines, and are almost robotic in these settings, but saying “No. It wasn’t a distraction at all,” wouldn’t have been a headline. And he didn’t exactly give a resounding ‘no’ when asked.
Kiffin was asked the same thing.
“I don’t know,” Kiffin said. “There are a lot of analytics about Alabama hangovers. Ask LSU. They scored 13 points against these guys after playing Alabama.”
The term ‘analytics’ has become a bastardized buzzword for evidence coaches can’t cite in the moment to argue a point that they’re not even sure is true, if the evidence exists at all.
Saturday’s loss was a damning one given the current dynamic surrounding Kiffin. Even if you remove the Auburn job from the conversation, Ole Miss does not pay Kiffin $7 million per year to be non-competitive against .500 divisional opponents fighting for bowl eligibility. The Rebels haven’t been a great road team under Kiffin, but very rarely have they played a game that felt like the result was not in question after a single quarter. The only other time it happened was at Alabama last year, shortly after Kiffin uttered the now infamous “get your popcorn” line to the CBS sideline reporter moments before kickoff. This Arkansas team is not exactly 2021 Alabama. So, really, this is the first time it has happened against an opponent Ole Miss was expected to beat. I don’t believe that this game was merely a coincidence that was bound to happen at some point.
There have been hints of the Kiffin tax before this week
The metaphorical tax I keep referencing that comes with having Lane Kiffin as your program’s head coach, was felt by fans for the first time last week, but it isn’t a newly-implemented phenomenon. From antagonizing the fan base over crowd turnout in 2021 and early in the 2022 season (sometimes to the point of it being needless and him bringing it up without being asked a question about it), to being interested in other jobs after the 2021 regular season ended — the hints have been consistent throughout his tenure in Oxford. Remember the Miami mini-saga? Who knows what would’ve happened had Miami prioritized Kiffin over Mario Cristobal. I have a hunch, but won’t speculate any further. That wasn’t the only one either. Kiffin not being a serious candidate for the Florida and LSU openings was not due to him having little interest in either position, if you are picking up what I am putting down.
Kiffin lost both coordinators last offseason. Some may write that off as a byproduct of a successful season. I think that is a reason for the staff turnover, but hardly the only reason. Kiffin is often tactful with his words when speaking to the media. Earlier this year as Ole Miss prepared to play Texas A&M, he was asked about facing former Rebels defensive coordinator D.J. Durkin. Kiffin remarked that they would’ve loved to have kept him, but were “outbid” by the Aggies.
Kiffin is not one to romanticize his current position, no matter where he is. He was never going to be a guy to come in and gush about how much he loves Oxford and proclaim to be there the long haul. That is not really his style. Ole Miss knew what it signed up for, in that sense. He is hardly the only coach in the profession with that approach. But the total Kiffin package would be more digestible if that were even a small piece of his personality.
What about August when he spoke about being comfortable at Ole Miss and needing Oxford and Ole Miss more than it needed him? That is all well and good, and there is no reason to believe he was being insincere. That also is a lot easier to say in preseason camp coming off of a historic 2021 campaign than it is in November when the coaching cycle that has become known as “Silly Season” begins to ramp back up and tangible opportunities elsewhere begin to surface.
Why Auburn?
Auburn is a job that, historically speaking, has been a level above Ole Miss, with a vastly more proven track record of success, better facilities and a deeper chest of money and resources. Whatever your opinion is of the current state of Auburn’s program, it has played for two national titles and won three SEC Western Division championships in the last 12 years. There is more of a proof of concept of sustained success at Auburn than there is at Ole Miss, as upset as that might make some fans to hear.
You can debate whether it is a better job now, in 2022, and if so, how much better. That’s a valid conversation. Auburn is an agricultural school with a strange and overbearing booster dynamic. Hell, they just orchestrated a nearly year-long, multi-chaptered coup to get the now former head coach Bryan Harsin, fired. Harsin was hardly blameless in his short stint at Auburn, but he wasn’t really set up for success either. The boosters wanted to hire Kevin Steele. The athletic director at the time, Allen Greene, wanted to make his own hire and settled on Harsin. Greene won the internal struggle and made the hire, but it came at a cost. He is now unemployed, as is his desired candidate. In this modern age of NIL, collectives and athletes being compensated for their talent, alumni and booster networks being on the same page and everyone rowing in the same direction is seemingly important. No matter what school-friendly media in Auburn want to tell you, there is little evidence that is currently the case on The Plains. I cackled at a local report from a team-site outlet last week that declared it was a new day at Auburn, and that newly-minted AD John Cohen, less than three weeks into his new gig, would be the lone operator and decision maker in this hire. There is no precedent to support that.
Oh, and about the NIL piece of this. As this saga took shape, a narrative sprouted that Auburn’s NIL fund was exponentially larger than anything Ole Miss could possibly offer. ESPN reporter Chris Low, who is one of the few media members Kiffin trusts (Low was on the plane when Kiffin touched down in Oxford in December of 2019 for an embed story), went on an Alabama radio show and intensified that narrative.
Low declared that Auburn had ten times more NIL money than Ole Miss. Even if that specific statement was a bit hyperbolic, it has seemingly proven to be nonsense.
Walker Jones, who runs Ole Miss’ largest collective, the Grove Collective, went on SportsTalk Mississippi last week and shot that notion down, even asserting that Kiffin is comfortable where Ole Miss is from an NIL standpoint. Though Jones didn’t cite a specific number, there is merit to his claim. AL.com reported in a story last Thursday that Auburn’s largest collective, the On To Victory’s Name, Image, and Likeness collective, had a goal of having at least $7 million specifically for football. While I will not divulge the specifics of RebelGrove’s exclusive reporting for subscribers, our Chase Parham reported (a specific number) last week that the number Ole Miss is currently. It is very much in the same ballpark as Auburn’s ‘goal.’
It is also important to point out that many of these NIL reports (not necessarily the ones I referenced above) concerning any school should be taken with a grain of salt due to the vague nature of the book keeping and who has access to the documents that would serve as proof. For example, a rumor floated two weeks ago that Auburn has $13 million in NIL. I have no reason to believe that is untrue, but that number turned out not to be football-specific. What does that number mean? What does the $7 million goal actually mean? Is that money in-hand? Is that money pledged? How many years are these NIL deals spread across and at what monthly or yearly rate is a specific player paid? All of these are unanswerable questions without access to the bookkeeping, which very few people — and certainly not many, if any, reporters — have access to.
So where exactly is the merit behind the idea Auburn’s NIL funds are exponentially greater than Ole Miss’? It’s entirely possible the Tigers have more money in-hand than they are letting on, or that there is more money coming upon hiring a coach of Kiffin’s stature. I don’t know what is specifically true in that regard and anyone telling you they do is likely full of sh*t. All of these questions are valid when it comes to the Ole Miss side, too, by the way, but the idea that Auburn is in another stratosphere doesn’t seem like it is remotely true. That needed nuance isn’t a part of internet commentary.
Ole Miss is doing all it can to pony up
There are positives to the way Kiffin conducts business. He’s seemingly forced Ole Miss to pony up financially to a level that is beyond what it has historically been perceived as able to do. SportsTalk’s Richard Cross reported on Thursday that Ole Miss sent Lane Kiffin a new-contract offer that would make him one of the highest paid coaches in the sport. I can share in good confidence that the annual salary number is slightly north of $9 million. That would make Kiffin somewhere between the 6th and 8th highest paid coach in college football, depending on what the specific number is. That is a big boy salary. With that comes raised expectations.
Kiffin’s success in Oxford has led to Ole Miss becoming more proactive with NIL rather than reactive. No, Ole Miss’ collective is not the highest in the sport nor close to it. But a school that has traditionally been behind when it comes to organization and adaptation got organized earlier than a lot of programs. When the NCAA legislation permitting NIL went into effect last summer, Ole Miss did not wait around. The Grove Collective came together and has been more proactive than the majority of other schools (as in FBS programs, not just the SEC). Winning breeds interest and increases the level of collective buy-in from fans, administrators and boosters alike. Would Ole Miss have been this proactive had it hired someone other than Kiffin who posted marginal success in their first 2.5 years as head coach? I’d have to think that answer is no.
A state law handicaps the Mississippi schools to a degree. Ole Miss can’t offer a contract, on paper at least, beyond four years. I am no legal scholar, but it is my understanding that a couple of loopholes can allow the school to extend that to six years or so, even if it isn’t officially part of the public contract. It’s a limitation. Make no mistake about that. Auburn can offer an eight-year deal worth $75-80 million (or more) with more guaranteed money and long-term security that Ole Miss cannot match. I have reason to believe that is a concern for Kiffin, even if I don’t understand why.
So, with all of that being considered? Shouldn’t the way jobs are valued change, too? Is Auburn a better job than Ole Miss? I think so, but I think the gap is much smaller than the antiquated thinking commonly practiced by fans and media alike leads most people to believe.
So, why Auburn? It is probably the fourth-best job in the SEC West, with Ole Miss being maybe the fifth-best depending on where you want to rank Arkansas in that mix. Is that really worth making the move? Auburn’s roster needs a major overhaul. Whomever takes that job will have their work cut out for them in 2023. I believe the transfer portal has largely nixed the concept of longer rebuilds being a requirement, but as patience becomes more nonexistent by the day in this crazy, high-stakes sport, that’s something worth considering. Kiffin has elevated and transformed the Ole Miss program into a consistent winner. Is a slight step up to start back from square one a logical decision in terms of his career? I don’t think so, but I am not Lane Kiffin and do not know what he thinks.
The Kiffin Tax can work against Lane Kiffin, too.
The question we keep pondering here is why Auburn? Why would Kiffin leave? I don’t pretend to be have been around the block long enough to have covered dozens of stories like this, but I can say this one is among the strangest I have ever covered in terms of the varying reporting, the seemingly lack of logic in the decision-making process and the reclusive and self-serving nature of the coach at the center of it. But watching this story unfold over the last seven days has made me certain of one thing: this proverbial Kiffin Tax can work against the man himself, too.
Nothing about the arc of Lane Kiffin’s coaching career leads you to believe he seeks long-term stability and security. As a head coach, he’s never stayed at one place for four full seasons. He’s never stayed anywhere longer than three years as an assistant, aside from his initial struggles at USC during the Pete Carroll era as he worked his way up the ranks from position coach to coordinator. He lasted one season as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders before being fired four games into his second year. He left Tennessee after one year to take the USC job and was the head coach at FAU for three seasons. At a certain point, your personality traits and general nature begin to cement your career and legacy.
Let’s circle back to the end of last week leading into the Arkansas game for a moment. Kiffin had every opportunity to quell the speculation concerning his future and mitigate any potential distraction. If he’s happy at Ole Miss and doesn’t desire to go elsewhere, sign the new deal, announce it and ride the tidal wave of positive PR that comes with it as he continues to build the emotional capital that comes with being the most successful Ole Miss head coach in a generation. Kiffin seemingly has little interest in doing that. When asked about it after the game, he offered platitude about how he was happy here and did not want to address the matter any further. In his weekly Monday press conference, Kiffin was asked about it again, and was again given another opportunity to end the speculation.
“I don’t know what else to say. I am extremely happy here,” Kiffin said. “I am extremely proud of where the program is today compared to three years ago. I could get up here and give you the, whatever, Pine Box speech or the ‘I am not going to be the next coach at Alabama’ and those things, but.. I don’t know what those things mean.”
It was followed by a weirdly awkward laugh that was as strange as the incoherent answer.
“We have been here three years and been fortunate enough to have three contracts,” Kiffin said. “I don’t know why a fourth contract would make anyone feel any better.”
As this column was prepared to be published, a local TV outlet reported that it is all but a done deal, though the wording of the report is not remotely how these things work. I do not believe that specific report to be true. At the time this article is published, I do not believe Kiffin has an official offer from Auburn. I believe the aforementioned report to be an attempt to be first in an absence of actual sourcing that is now more commonly accepted than ever as journalistic standards continue to lower. But where there is smoke, there is usually fire.
I believe that Kiffin likes having his name floated for jobs and is purposeful in constantly using that capital as leverage to continue to squeeze everything he can get out of the metaphorical orange that is Ole Miss. There are positive aspects of that approach, but also negative ones too. Ole Miss was embarrassed in Fayetteville on Saturday night. The game felt secondary to the black cloud of uncertainty hovering over the Rebels’ program — one created solely by Kiffin.
Ole Miss no-showed the game and the speculation has only intensified since. As the days churn on, he is losing that emotional capital among the fan base and administrators who are seemingly exhausted by the saga and his unwillingness to commit to the program. The speculation bled onto the field on Saturday night. In an industry where results are all that matters, that shifts the tide of support, or lack thereof, more rapidly than anything else.
Kiffin is always looking for the next opportunity and seems to have little interest ingratiating himself in the community of the current place in which he resides. It’s why seeking long-term security in a contract makes little sense to me. I understand that it means more guaranteed money if and when he is fired, but does he strike you as a guy hoping not to get fired instead of being irrationally confident he will win at an elite level at every job he takes? Long-term security is something every successful person desires in their respective field. But what about the aforementioned capital he has built at Ole Miss would make Kiffin being fired in three years seem like a remotely rational possibility? That is why I don’t understand the hang-up on a four-year contract versus an eight-year contract.
In the only semblance of affection or complacency he has shown regarding Ole Miss and Oxford in what was a pseudo image rehabilitation tour in August, Kiffin talked about his perception of being the guy that always changes jobs and not liking that being what is associated with him. That makes for nice preseason fodder and makes fans feel good, but if it isn’t genuine, then it does not change the reality of the situation or who someone is. At a certain point, a person’s actions tell you who they are more poignantly than platitudes in a press conference that are intentionally vague in nature.
In late September of 2013, when he was an embattled head coach at USC, as the team returned to Los Angeles after a road loss to Arizona State to fall to 1-3 on the year, Kiffin was called off a team bus at LAX airport and infamously fired on a tarmac. College football is a cutthroat world. Coaches are fired rapidly as patience becomes a nonexistent virtue. But the manner in which they are fired carry varying levels of grace and empathy. The place and manner in which Kiffin was fired is telling, in my opinion, and offers a glimpse as to who he is, or at least who he is viewed to be by those who have employed him. Getting fired on an airport tarmac is not solely due to a road loss in Tempe, Arizona. It’s due to a lack of success, coupled with an administration growing irritated with the brash, bizarre and self-centered personality of a man who is difficult to coexist with. USC was tired of dealing with Lane Kiffin as much as it was frustrated by the losses. When Kiffin took the head coaching position at Florida Atlantic, he planned to remain as Alabama’s offensive coordinator through their run in the College Football Playoff. Nick Saban abruptly fired Kiffin after the Crimson Tide’s playoff win over Washington and named Steve Sarkisian the offensive coordinator days before the team’s National Championship matchup against Georgia. The move was unexpected and hardly common.
Lane Kiffin is about Lane Kiffin more so than anything else. That is more digestible when wins pile up, but even then, there is an exhausting nature to that type of abrasive, cold personality. One of the many reasons Kiffin’s opportunity at Ole Miss, to be a head coach at a major program again, was interesting was because the perpetually intriguing storyline of whether a man who hit rock bottom, built himself back up and has changed his perception, was actually a changed man. Books are written, television shows and movies are made based off of the simple idea of whether people can actually change. In August, Kiffin seemingly liked the idea of being perceived as a changed man.
On Monday, when asked an innocuous question about the significance of the Egg Bowl to Mississippians and recruiting, amidst all of the smoke surrounding his future at Ole Miss, Kiffin took the opportunity to take a shot at Ole Miss’ facilities in an answer that was not really related to the question at all.
“Maybe we will have enough money to have a facility that doesn’t leak water on us,” Kiffin quipped as he looked up to the ceiling.
At the end of the day, it is hard to fault Kiffin (or any coach for that matter) for looking out for himself. College football is a volatile industry and self-preservation is important. If Kiffin believes he can win at a higher level, more consistently, at the fourth-best job in the SEC West, playing Alabama and Georgia every year while sharing a state with a man responsible for the start of rehabilitating his career, Nick Saban, then more power to him.
Whatever his future may hold, whether that be at Ole Miss, Auburn or somewhere else, the idea that Lane Kiffin is a changed man is proving to be a farce. Lane Kiffin is about Lane Kiffin, and the likelihood of his nomadic existence morphing into contentment and appreciation of the space in which he currently resides is not rooted in any sort of reality — until further notice.
Great article!!!