Paul Finebaum: Lane Kiffin is blowing up another SEC team for his own personal greed

The Lane Kiffin saga would appear to be over. He’s now left Ole Miss for LSU, he won’t be coaching Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff, and he’s been replaced by Pete Golding. In the process, Paul Finebaum believes that Kiffin blew up the Ole Miss team right before it goes into its first CFP run.

The Ole Miss administration did not want Kiffin to also coach a rival SEC school during that CFP run. Kiffin did. That put the two sides at a standoff. Amid that, there were reports that Kiffin was giving staff an ultimatum, follow him to LSU right away or be out of a job. That’s the move Finebaum took note of, in particular, and shined a light on during Sunday’s Matt Barrie Show.

“Didn’t work,” Paul Finebaum said. “It didn’t move anybody in Oxford because they had already made the decision because they just frankly didn’t trust Lane Kiffin anymore. He was their coach through the Egg Bowl, but they didn’t trust what would happen if he gets named at LSU on Sunday and then is two weeks later coaching in Oxford, by the way, with full access to the Ole Miss computers where all the secrets are, where all the recruits are, where all the contacts are, and they didn’t trust him to take all that information while he’s also building and recruiting for LSU, their biggest rival.”

The College Football Playoff is just weeks away. So, losing a head coach is tricky enough to handle for Ole Miss. Losing an entire staff makes it a nearly impossible situation. That’s what’s happened by demanding coaches follow him right away to LSU, though, coupled with Ole Miss not being comfortable with him coaching further.

There was also a time in the past when Kiffin coached in the CFP, as the Alabama offensive coordinator. He was noted at the time for doing a poor job and getting fired by Nick Saban before the national championship game that season.

“We saw this in 2016 when Kiffin took the Florida Atlantic job. He did a pathetic job preparing Alabama for the Washington game in the CFP. Alabama won, but they were ineffective and Saban fired him,” Finebaum said. “Because he didn’t trust him the week of the national championship game. It was a mistake in retrospect because Kiffin, even on a bad day, would’ve done a better job than what Alabama had against Clemson in a game they lost on the final play.”

This, of course, isn’t the first time Kiffin has chosen to leave an SEC program. He famously left Tennessee for USC after just one season. Now, he’s made that move again. In this case, it was widely speculated that the move was because he thought he could win a national championship at LSU but not at Ole Miss. That’s despite 11-1 Ole Miss being ready for the CFP now.

“But I think it’s blown up again, and as somebody who really likes Lane Kiffin, I feel badly that because of greed, because it’s better over there than it is where I am, even though my team is ranked in the Top 10 and LSU is nowhere to be found. Kiffin is going to blow up yet another SEC campus for his own personal greed,” Finebaum said.

“I hope he’s successful and I think he will be successful. But, ultimately, he still doesn’t have a championship on his resume. I saw a comparison head-to-head between Lane Kiffin and Gus Malzahn this morning… I mean, Gus Malzahn is 3-5 lifetime against Nick Saban, the best coach of all time. Kiffin is 0 for his career against Saban. It was just amazing, Gus Malzahn, who may or may not have a job at the end of the day as a coordinator, blows Kiffin away on a head-to-head basis.”

As a college head coach, Lane Kiffin has a 116-53 record. That includes a 55-19 record at Ole Miss, his most recent stop. He also did win two conference titles when he was at FAU. Now, he’ll take on a new challenge at LSU, with the goal to win a national championship.