Lane Kiffin reveals his one regret about leaving Ole Miss originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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Lane Kiffin is one of college football’s most polarizing figures.
After leaving Ole Miss for LSU, the longtime coach was scrutinized for his exit strategy and how ugly the situation turned in the matter of a week. However, like any change in life, there can either be smooth or rocky seas ahead.
Kiffin wanted to stay in Oxford and finish what he started, leading the Rebels into the College Football Playoff. At the end, Ole Miss’ administration said ‘no’. New head coach Pete Golding got the team past the initial rounds before falling to Miami.
In retrospect, would Kiffin have changed his exit six months later? Yes. In fact, it’s one of his regrets about the process.
“I think I would have just come in and said, ‘Okay, I’m leaving,’” Kiffin said on the Pardon My Take podcast. “I’m very appreciative of everything. I spent a lot of time right there fighting to coach the team, trying to keep everything together. Totally respect their decision. But I was trying so hard to keep that together. Like, hey, let us all coach. Let this whole thing, you know, let’s see if we can win the whole thing.
“And so, obviously, that didn’t happen that way, which then created a lot of it, because that was the whole night and morning of that, and then what was going to happen, and then the team meeting moved back and all the things that went with it, and then you couldn’t have a normal team meeting, because at that time it had, you know, gotten into all that, and then you know, naming of (Pete) Golding as the head coach”
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Kiffin sees the other side of the equation with the fans. Ole Miss lives and dies by the Rebels, which is a reason why so much emotion has been injected into the conversation around his abrupt departure. They love you when you’re good and hate you when you’re bad. There’s not two ways about it.
“Where else does that happen? That the people that for six years loved you, want to build a statue, chant for you at the last game to stay, and then they hate you like that? And then you land here and the people here that, when we’d play here were yelling at me, hating me and saying everything I did was horrible, ‘We love you,’” Kiffin added.
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If there’s one game every casual college football fan has circled on the calendar, it’s Week 3’s primetime affair between LSU and Ole Miss. Kiffin’s homecoming to Oxford will be fueled with emotions from several different aspects, including the fans wanting to see him leave with a loss.
Kiffin is ready to show his move to LSU is the start of bringing a championship culture back to Baton Rouge.
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