He isn't as hot a property as you think. If he was he would already be gone.
He's making $9M a year. He is like Mullen was for us. A hot commodity but paid well enough with a enough question marks that it's going to take the right program and circumstances to leave. But Kiffin has stayed focused and I think the question marks are more or less as gone as they can be in a coaching search. Excluding 2020, he's won 10, 7, 10, and 9 games in the regular season at Ole Miss. He's probably going to win 10 this year. He hasn't had any off the field distractions that anybody knows about. Yes, he's been fortunate with his schedule, but I don't think that's going to give people much pause.
Somebody is going to pay top dollar for Kiffin. PSU and UF are both going to be dying to lock up a "sure thing", PSU because you don't spend $46M or whatever buyout to roll the dice and UF because they just paid Mcelwain $7M (which seems like a bargain now) to hire Mullen, for them to pay him $12M to hire sunbelt Billy, only to pay him ~$21M to hire somebody else. UF either has to reset and go cheap and focus on NIL or they have to go big to get the most sure thing they can. Surely they won't pay $50 again to hire a sunbelt coach.
I feel like Kiffin's worst case scenario is PSU and UF look a different direction, and he's "only" able to negotiate Ole Miss up to $10M a year. If Ole Miss can keep him another year, I still believe at some point salaries will flatline as schools try to save money for NIL. The highest paid NFL coach is paid 1/3 of the highest paid player. The tenth highest paid coach is paid about 20% of the highest paid player. I don't think NCAA coaching is going to look like that, but I don't think you'll continue to see just the head coaches salary being more than 50% of the size of the total NIL budget.
