‘It will forever be part of his coaching biography’ – ESPN officially grades the LSU Tigers’ hiring of Lane Kiffin
Lane Kiffin left the Ole Miss Rebels after the final regular season game of the year to become the head coach of the LSU Tigers.
There’s been a significant amount of coaching movement over the last couple of weeks, but the biggest move of the “offseason” is easily the LSU Tigers managing to hire Lane Kiffin away from the Ole Miss Rebels.
Kiffin guided Ole Miss to a College Football Playoff appearance, but he wasn’t allowed to coach the Rebels in the playoff after accepting LSU’s offer to replace Brian Kelly as the Tigers’ head coach.
Most of the talk about Kiffin leaving for LSU has centered on him leaving Ole Miss in the middle of a playoff run.
Swiping Kiffin from Ole Miss, though, is a historic coup for LSU. The Tigers are getting a coach that possesses one of the best offensive minds in college football, and Kiffin’s proved at multiple programs that he can quickly put an exciting product on the field.
ESPN grades the LSU Tigers’ hiring of Lane Kiffin
ESPN’s Billy Connelly graded each of this winter’s head coaching hires and he gave the Kiffin hire an A+.
“We won’t overthink this one,” wrote Connelly. “Everything about the run-up to Kiffin’s departure from Ole Miss was dramatic and strung out, and it will forever be part of his coaching biography that he left an active playoff team for a school he had beaten weeks earlier. But in his past nine years as a head coach, he has won double-digit games six times (at schools without much, or any, recent history of doing that), and he engineered the Rebels’ best three-year run in 60-plus years. He checks almost every box for a school that can afford to hire a guy who checks lots of boxes.”
Kiffin will be expected to find success quickly in Baton Rouge. But with the rich in-state talent base, plus the ability to land top transfers thanks to LSU’s strong brand recognition, it shouldn’t take long for Kiffin to return the Tigers to a championship level.
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Lane Kiffin has only been the head coach of the LSU Tigers for a few days, but some folks are already guessing what the next stop in his career will be. It’s possible that Kiffin could choose to stay at LSU until he retires from college football, but his career path suggests this isn’t his […]
