Though Lane Kiffin's to blame, he's also a predictable symptom of a system easily fixed
On Sunday, Lane Kiffin did the thing we all should have expected but told ourselves would never happen and that’s leave the program he’s skippered into the national championship race for the swampy pastures of the program he must take over now.
Let it also be known that as a football matter, it’s not as crazy as it sounds.
Yeah, Kiffin has no shame.
Yeah, he sullied himself and maybe the whole profession by making his choice, because, silly us, we thought the whole idea was to go win a national championship, not give back the chance.
But that’s just what Kiffin’s done, leaving Ole Miss for LSU.
It’s unbecoming, disloyal, selfish and antithetical to every value a football coach is supposed to embrace.
Also, if you’re Kiffin, or any other coach, and the question is where can more money be made, better players be attracted, more games be won and more championships be chased, the answer is LSU rather than Ole Miss even as Ole Miss remains a lock to reach the College Football Playoff.
Ole Miss has never won a national championship and LSU has won three since 2003. Louisiana tends to be more talent rich than Mississippi. The money’s already in place.
From making an annual $9 million in Oxford, Kiffin will make an annual $13 million in Baton Rouge and that’s before the incentives kick in.
All that and lack of dough doesn’t figure to ever be an LSU problem when assistant coaches and players are paid.
The optics suck, but is every coach in America allowed to choose LSU over Ole Miss but Lane Kiffin?
Kiffin insists his wish was to continue coaching the Rebels and there’s no reason not to believe him, but what is Ole Miss to do?
Kiffin can’t be recruiting at his new school against the one he still coaches. Should the Rebels shock the world and win it all without him, Ole Miss can’t be letting an impostor lead the way.
But what nobody seems to realize is the entire saga was set in motion not by LSU’s mid-season firing of Brian Kelly, opening the job Kiffin took, but by two structural changes made for the alleged greater good of the game.
One, the playoff, which can’t be put back in the bottle. Once four teams, it’s now 12, and the whole way we look at the national championship has changed.
Used to be, the point was not to leave out any team whose regular season gave it a national championship claim and four was enough. Now an over-the-top-rope battle-royal dozen, catching fire at the right time can win the whole thing, even for a squad whose regular season would never have made the previous grade.
Were it still four teams, that’s eight fewer coaches who might be enticed to take Kiffin’s route, leaving four who still could, but who’s bolting when two more wins hand you the crown?
The other, we can do something about.
Just kill early signing day.
Put in place eight years ago, it seemed like a no-brainer.
Why have to wrangle your recruiting class an extra month when you could sign it up and be done with it — well, this year, on Wednesday?
For that matter, why make high school prospects go through a grinding and taxing process for another month when they can shut the noise down now?
It all made sense at the time.
Who knew it was Pandora’s Box opening.
Only since early signing day came along have coaches been forced to leave for their next job pronto, not looking back.
Since 2017, early signing day’s been an inescapable anvil falling from the sky. Calls must be made, coordinators must be signed up. It’s a 96-hour sprint, Sunday to Wednesday, to put your first recruiting class together.
Kill early signing day and it all goes away.
Kill early signing day and even if you reach the national championship game, set for Jan. 19 this season, you still have two weeks before the only signing day — NATIONAL SIGNING DAY!!! — arrives.
It used to be a thing.
Were the old system still the system, Kiffin’s soap opera might have continued another three weeks, but only because his hiring date would have been pushed back to a day or two after Ole Miss’ season concludes.
Simple. Easy.
A months-long drama, but no hard feelings.
It’s the way it used to be and could be again.
But not the way it is now.
Even if God told him to go — “You know, I talked to God and he told me it’s time to take a new step,” Kiffin actually told ESPN’s Marty Smith — Kiffin has earned the blame.
For his team, for the commitments he asked of each player since his Oxford arrival, he should have stayed and told LSU no.
He’s also a predictable symptom of a fixable problem wrongly created to fix other problems.
The price, it turns out, is too high.
Kill early signing day and bring back the first-week-of-February event it used to be.
It was too much, sure, but we knew it and enjoyed it anyway.
The ballad of Lane Kiffin, not so much.
May it never happen again.