By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports
BATON ROUGE – After a coy courtship, Lane Kiffin finally said “yes to the dress” Sunday morning.
The 50-year-old Kiffin, who led Ole Miss to its first 11-win regular season this year, accepted a reported $84 million, 7-year offer (plus bonuses) to become the 33rd LSU head football coach in history.
He replaces Brian Kelly, who was fired on Oct. 26 after 3 ½ seasons. In 14 seasons as a college head coach (Tennessee, USC, Florida Atlantic and Ole Miss), Kiffin is 116-53, including 55-19 (32-17) in the last six seasons with the Rebels. An official introduction at LSU is expected around midday Monday.
Kiffin met with Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter and school chancellor Glynn Boyce for four hours stretching from late Saturday afternoon into the night.
He was slated to inform his team at an early afternoon meeting on Sunday that he was leaving. LSU reportedly sent planes to Oxford to bring him and his family to Baton Rouge.
With the 2025 Tigers becoming the first LSU team in history to score 25 points or fewer against all of its FBS (Division 1-A) opponents in the regular season, the school wanted to hire a head coach with high-scoring offensive concepts.
Under Kiffin, the Ole Miss offense has ranked as the most prolific in the nation, leading the FBS in both yards per game since the beginning of the 2020 season (503.2) and total yards (37,235). Ole Miss is also the lone school nationally to rank top-six since 2020 in both passing (third) and rushing (sixth).
It was widely known that Kiffin wanted to coach the 11-1 Rebels in their anticipated College Football Playoff appearance. Ole Miss declined because it didn’t want Kiffin around its players when the transfer portal opens on Jan. 2.
Kiffin led the Rebels to five consecutive bowl berths (including three wins), a CFP playoff berth, and two New Year’s Six appearances. Kiffin had three 10-win seasons in Oxford, including Ole Miss’s first-ever 11-win season.
Since 2021, Ole Miss ranks third in the SEC at 50 wins, trailing only Georgia (63) and Alabama (54).
In his head coaching stops at USC, Tennessee and FAU, Kiffin helped turn programs around. He came to Ole Miss from Florida Atlantic, where he flipped an FAU program that won nine games over the previous three seasons with two conference titles and two 10-win seasons.
Kiffin graduated from Fresno State in 1998 after playing quarterback for three seasons (1994-96) for the Bulldogs. He began his coaching career as a student assistant at Fresno State under Pat Hill in 1997 and 1998.
Kiffin has been fired twice as a head coach, first after 20 games by the NFL’s then-Oakland Raiders in 2008 and then by USC five games into his fourth season in 2013.
Nick Saban resurrected Kiffin’s career when the now-retired Alabama head coach hired him as the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator in January 2014.
Kiffin convinced Saban to use more spread offense and play at a faster tempo.
In Kiffin’s three seasons, Alabama was a combined 40-4 overall, 22-2 in the SEC, won three league championships and played in CFP finals, winning a national title in 2015.
It was Saban, who won a national championship in 2003 during his third season at LSU, that convinced Kiffin he should consider coaching the Tigers. He told Kiffin about Louisiana’s fertile high school football recruiting grounds, something that swayed Saban to leave Michigan State for the Tigers in 2000.
