Lane Kiffin reflects on his journey, experience in previous coaching stops

As No. 6 Ole Miss gears up for the Egg Bowl and inches closer to what could be the program’s first College Football Playoff appearance, Lane Kiffin took a moment this week to look backward instead of forward.

In a candid reflection during his press conference, the Ole Miss head coach opened up about the long, winding, often tumultuous path that brought him to Oxford, and why he now sees every stop, setback and restart differently than he once did.

“Over the years, the changes that I’ve made, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on things that have happened,” Kiffin said. “I really feel like, in age, I figured out they all happened exactly how they were supposed to happen, when they were supposed to happen. I just didn’t think about it at the time. I thought they were disasters. They’re just all part of my story.”

Kiffin’s story is one of the most unconventional in modern college football. He spent just one season as Tennessee’s head coach in 2009 before bolting for USC — a tenure that ended abruptly in 2013 when he was famously fired after a 3-2 start.

He then rebuilt his reputation as Alabama’s offensive coordinator from 2014–16 under Nick Saban, helping launch the tide of offenses that reshaped the sport. That success spring-boarded him to Florida Atlantic, where from 2017–19 he proved he could again run a program.

In 2020, Ole Miss became his next chapter, and his most successful one yet. But Kiffin said it wasn’t until his father’s passing that he began to make sense of why the road was so uneven.

“I spoke at my dad’s funeral when he passed, and I always wondered why we moved so much,” he said. “It was hard on us as kids and everything. I realized that that was just all part of his story. That was God’s plan for him to impact all those people, and have all those relationships. So I think all that, all the stuff that happened, happened how it was supposed to happen.”

Now sitting at 10–1 with one of the most explosive offenses in the nation, Kiffin is on the doorstep of the Playoff, a destination that once seemed improbable given how his career began. At the same time, questions continue to swirl about his future, with LSU and Florida expected to make aggressive pushes for him to be their new head coach.

For Kiffin though, the present moment appears to be enough. The hard years were necessary, he believes. And whether his next chapter stays in Oxford or takes him elsewhere, he insists he finally understands the bigger picture.