Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin has become the biggest thing in all of football.

Not just the SEC. Not just college football. The entire football universe.

For every major college football program and now the NFL, Kiffin’s name is emerging as a top candidate. LSU and Florida fans are hoping to lure the 50-year-old coach away from his job in Oxford, Mississippi. New York Giants fans are pitching a reunion of Kiffin and his former quarterback, Jaxson Dart. I’m sure that if you were able to find a Frankfurt Galaxy fan, he’d tell you they’re aggressively pursuing Kiffin.

It has essentially been established, with little investigation, that Kiffin is the best available candidate, no matter what. Which begs the question: Is he as worthy of this attention as we’re making him out to be?

My colleague Ryan Robets and I sought to do just that. We dug into his resume and delivered a verdict on whether we believe Kiffin will transform these football teams and ascend to the upper echelon of coaches in the sport’s history.

Here are our results.

Is Lane Kiffin worth the hype?

Joe DeLeone: Worth the hype

Kiffin’s coaching career has been a wild one. From flameouts with the Oakland Raiders and USC to building FAU and Ole Miss into consistent winners, Kiffin has faced many challenges. To his credit, he’s battled through adversity and found success on the field.

Kiffin’s recent run with Ole Miss affirms that he’s a tremendous coach. Success is not linear, and the way he’s transformed Ole Miss proves he has what it takes to be a top coach. Many people will discount how much he’s raised Ole Miss’s floor year by year.

In four of his six seasons, Ole Miss has won at least ten games. They’ve hovered in the top ten through their offensive explosiveness. A driving force behind their sustained success is his underrated impact as a recruiter, as he’s signed five straight top-25 classes. He’s also signed the number one-ranked recruit in Mississippi for three consecutive years. The incoming 2025 class is his best yet and was ranked top 15 with a five-star wide receiver, Caleb Cunningham.

Turning Ole Miss, a middling program in the SEC, into a consistent winner and rising recruiting power speaks to his talent as a coach. The four 10-win seasons he’s produced are more than the program has seen in the last 50 years. Additionally, 2023’s 11-win season was the first ever season of that caliber. To have elevated a team that isn’t supposed to be in a national championship mix is impressive.

However, there’s one aspect of this that is unrelated to his coaching prowess. Should he be trusted to stay? Kiffin’s head coaching career was defined by his mishandling of his transition from Tennessee to USC, bolting for Los Angeles after one season. Now he’s flirting with other programs while on track to coach in the College Football Playoff at Ole Miss.

It’s just like dating a new partner who cheated on their old partner with you. Your relationship is likely to end the way that it started. What stops Kiffin from taking a head coaching gig in the NFL in five years? His growth as a coach could be deemed as a negative, because as he rises, it’s unclear if he’ll decide to stay put.

Ryan Roberts: Overhyped

The push for Lane Kiffin is an extremely interesting one. Most people can look at Kiffin’s coaching resume and come to an easy conclusion: He’s a good head coach. Kiffin is also one of the greatest offensive minds of this generation, which has continuously made him an attractive option for when jobs come open. The appeal by schools like LSU and Florida is understandable, and overall, Kiffin would be a good hire overall. His personality would fit well with the LSU Tigers especially, and his quirkiness and energy would do well in Baton Rouge, as long as the fanbase accepted his brashness at times.

While he would be a good hire, the hype around Kiffin does feel like a bit much right now. His personality, combined with his offensive play calling, has blinded some to believe he’s this incredible head coach. When you really dig into his resume, there are still a lot of things he needs to improve. That includes against the best teams on the schedule, where Kiffin currently holds a 11-24 overall record against ranked opponents as the Ole Miss head coach. His win percentage against Top 10 teams is actually even higher, currently sitting with a 5-6 record, but it is below .500 regardless. Some will contribute that solely to a downfall of the Rebel program, but Ole Miss has invested a lot into this program, and results against other good teams has still been inconsistent.

Even when Ole Miss allowed for Kiffin and his staff to put together a super team of dominance in 2024, they still weren’t able to earn a spot in the College Football Playoffs. Instead, the program proceeded to lose to the likes of Kentucky to seal their fate, a team that had a losing record during that campaign. Kiffin has a lot of appeal as a head coach, but there are still a lot of questions.

With the uniqueness of Kiffin’s personality, and his outspoken nature, fanbases are either going to love him or hate him. Will the fans rally behind him in tough times? Will Kiffin alienate fans at the first signs of trouble? Those are the questions that Kiffin must answer jf he does end up taking a new job. There’s a balancing act between the results he’s giving you, and how much a fanbase can take with his big personality.

College Football

Alabama lands elite RB, and Notre Dame’s answer to a big game worry highlights hypothetical CFB trades ahead of the playoffs

College football hypothetical trades allow playoff contenders to fill their biggest needs heading toward the postseason.

Joe DeLeone