Lane Kiffin’s career has been built on comebacks, and that’s exactly why his next stop comes with a warning label.
Once viewed as one of college football’s most polarizing coaches, Kiffin rebuilt his image through success at Ole Miss. He went 55-19 in six seasons, delivered four double-digit-win seasons in his last five years there, and turned a program that had lived in the middle tier into a regular threat. Last year, he also guided the Rebels to their first College Football Playoff appearance.
That run is what made him such a strong figure in the sport again. It also set up the kind of relationship Paul Finebaum thinks can flip fast.
On “The Paul Finebaum Show,” Finebaum said coaches like Kiffin tend to win people over early by pairing personality with results. But, in his view, the love doesn’t always last.
"Just like Ole Miss fans went all in for Lane Kiffin and now hate him because he betrayed them, LSU fans will do the same thing," Finebaum said. "You heard it a minute ago; nobody's ever done more for LSU than Nick Saban.
And that lady down in Louisiana said, 'How come you aren't talking about Nick Saban, who is a liar?' That's how people are."
The point Finebaum was making wasn’t that Kiffin can’t succeed in Baton Rouge. It was that the bond between a coach and a fan base can be powerful when the wins are coming, but it can also sour quickly when expectations shift.
Kiffin now takes over at LSU with a chance to build another powerhouse. If he delivers, the Tigers will likely embrace him the same way Ole Miss once did.
But LSU isn’t a place where winning a little is enough. The expectations are championship-level, and that raises the stakes from day one.
That’s the tension Finebaum is pointing to: the same edge that makes Kiffin such an appealing hire could also become the source of friction later. For now, he gets another shot at redemption, this time in Baton Rouge, where the spotlight is even brighter.
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