After a long and confusing process, Lane Kiffin is the new head coach of the LSU Tigers football team.
Even after leading the Ole Miss Rebels to their best college football season in program history, the 49-year-old coach left Oxford right before their CFB Playoff push began, to become the next face of the Baton Rouge program.
While fallout from the massive change will take weeks, even months to fully unravel, Kiffin is now the replacement for Brian Kelly, who was fired halfway through this season. But less than 24 hours after officially accepting the LSU job, and just hours before his introductory press conference, Kiffin dropped a cryptic social media post on X, coming after extreme amounts of backlash from the Ole Miss fanbase after his move.
“Exhale,” Kiffin wrote, accompanied by a picture of a passage from a motivational book. “Have the best Monday ever. #GodsPlan.”
After six years at Ole Miss, leading them to their best regular season and SEC record in program history, Kiffin joins LSU on a deal reportedly worth more than $13 million a year, making him one of the highest-paid coaches in college football.
Kiffin Takes The LSU Head Coach Job
ESPN’s Marty Smith was at the forefront of the Kiffin story over the past few days. Once his move to Louisiana was made official, the insider interviewed the coach to uncover his ultimate reasoning for leaving ‘The Sip.”
“My heart was [at Ole Miss], but I talked to some mentors, Coach [Pete] Carroll, Coach [Nick] Saban,” Kiffin told Smith. “Especially when Coach Carroll said, ‘Your dad would tell you to go. Take the shot’…I talked to God, and he told me it’s time to take a new step.”
Kiffin had expressed interest in the LSU job in the past, and though he had previously pledged his allegiance to Ole Miss, he made what he called the ‘difficult’ decision to take the new position. Despite leading the Rebels to what is expected to be their first CFP appearance, in part due to the college football calendar, he will not coach them for the rest of the year.
“I was hoping to complete a historic six-season run,” Kiffin said in his original statement posted on X. “My request to do so was denied by [Rebels athletic director] Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance.”
Immediately after the news, Ole Miss permanently elevated Pete Golding to become their new head coach. He was previously the team’s defensive coordinator, and though much of Kiffin’s Ole Miss staff is reportedly following him to LSU, Golding is set to take over for him going forward.
Lane Kiffin’s Coaching Journey
Despite his growth in popularity, or what some might prefer to just call ‘national attention‘, Kiffin isn’t new to the spotlight that head football coaches are under. Though his latest run at Ole Miss could be considered his most successful, it wasn’t his first time leading a nationally relevant program.
Kiffin got his sustained coaching start at USC, as after bouncing around a few schools, he held multiple coaching positions for the Trojans from 2002 to 2006. In what many considered an unexpected move, he then became the head coach of the then-Oakland Raiders, going a combined 5-15 in 2007 and 2008, where he was fired four games into that second season.
Kiffin then returned to the college ranks, where he’s stayed since. After leaving the Raiders, he took over the Tennessee Volunteers, where he stayed for one 7-5 season before going back to USC to take over his mentor Pete Carroll‘s program.
In his second stint with the Trojans (first time as head coach), Kiffin led the school to a 28-15 record across three and a half seasons. Despite multiple strong years, USC was under a Bowl ban dating back to an investigation on former star Reggie Bush, meaning Kiffin only coached USC in one bowl game, the 2012 Sun Bowl, in which they lost 21-7 to Georgia Tech.
Kiffin was fired in 2013 and went on to join Nick Saban‘s Alabama staff as the quarterback coach and offensive coordinator from 2014 to 2016. Following that stint, he landed another head coaching job, leading Florida Atlantic University from 2017 to 2019.
That entire journey led him to Ole Miss, where he coached from 2020 to 2025, with a combined 55-19 record, while going 28-12 in SEC play. He led the Rebels to five straight seasons with at least eight wins and five straight bowl appearances.
He was linked to the Florida, Penn. State, and LSU coaching jobs this season, but took the latter in what turned out to be a wild turn of events. LSU is set to hold an introductory press conference for Kiffin, who arrives in Baton Rouge with what looks like one of the top recruitment classes for 2026.
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