Paul Finebaum RIPS Lane Kiffin for leaving Ole Miss 🗣️ 'He BURNED his reputation again!' | Get Up

Including 11-1 this year. That was the scene as he was leaving yesterday, leaving Oxford, Mississippi on a large private jet. You saw the fans yelling and booing and cursing and all sorts of things. He was obviously greeted very differently when he got to Baton Rouge. So that was his day yesterday.

Here he was with Marty Smith.

You know that this was a very challenging, difficult day. You know, we went through a lot last night with Keith Carter, trying to figure out a way, you know, to make this playoff, you know, run work and be able to coach the team. And at the end of the day, that's his decision, and I totally respect that.

I understand that decision.

Some people will look at this and say, okay, it is the best season in the history of the school the best era in the history of the program a Playoff team with an opportunity to win a national championship. So what does LSU offer in your mind that Ole Miss doesn't I don't know

All that it just was something that I prayed on and made a family decision and maybe it's right Maybe it's wrong. But I think a lot of times, you know, you just go prove things, right and That's what we're going to do when we get there.

Fascinating. So everybody wants in on this conversation. But we will begin with Paul Feinbaum and Josh Pate. We are delighted to have both of you guys with us here to offer perspective. Now, Josh, you just set the table because we have a lot of people who watch the show, who are probably not as intimately familiar with the details of the calendar in college football now as the

people who would routinely be watching and listening to you. So can you give the most concise version of why in order for Lane Kiffin to go to LSU it had to happen right now.

So college football's calendar is a disaster. It's like if your mom walked in your room, threw a grenade in, it blew up, and then you get in trouble for the room being a mess. That's basically the existence of a coach or an AD right now. So, National Signing Day is 48 hours from now. You may be thinking to yourself at home,

but isn't the conference title game this Saturday? Yes, I told you it makes no sense. Furthermore, the portal, which would be college football's free agency, that is in the middle of the playoffs. And you might be thinking that makes no sense. You are correct. And so everyone who needs to hire a coach fires their current coach in October so that they can have a search in the middle of the season so that they can get a new guy in place, hopefully by yesterday,

like LSU did, so that they can salvage a recruiting class and a portal window. I hope that makes sense, Greeny, because really, it can't make sense because it doesn't make sense. Correct. It is understandable. It definitely doesn't make sense. Paul Feinbaum, what are the right, we have seen Lane Kiffin, the one thing I said yesterday is Lane Kiffin leaving a trail of fury behind him as he departs from one job to another is one of the few things left in life we can still count on. What are the right things to be saying and thinking of him this morning?

In many ways, Lane Kiffin has become college football's version of Kim Kardashian. No matter what he does or what she does, everything crashes and burns around him. And this is such so interesting because, Greeney, as we have talked many times here before, Lane Kiffin was hired by Ole Miss, he rebuilt his reputation, he rehabilitated it, and he became a sane Lane Kiffin until yesterday when he burned it all down once again because that's who Lane Kiffin is.

One of the big arguments all day Saturday on the game day set and everywhere else, let Lane Kiffin coach out the rest of the season. And then Lane telling Marty Smith yesterday, I wanted to coach the season and he blamed it on Keith Carter as boss. Guess whose fault this is? This is Lane Kiffin's fault. He could have easily coached the rest of the season in the playoffs and maybe won the national championship had he remained

the Ole Miss coach, but he chose to blow it all up, take the LSU job, and try to have this cake and eat it too.

What do you think, Josh?

I think it was laughable to ever suggest that he was going to be able to stick around in Oxford. Paul just stated it very clearly. I was sitting over in the corner like, hey, I know a way he can stick around and coach through the playoff.

There was one. remain the Ole Miss head coach. So, I mean, if you're a friend of Lane, or if you have certain motivation to try and get him to stick around, I get it. But in the real world, put yourself in Keith Carter's shoes for two seconds. There is no world where he's allowed to stick around, especially when he's headed down to Baton Rouge.

I don't know if people have checked the Wikipedia page in the last few minutes.

That's a rival school to Ole Miss. So there was no world where that was ever going to happen. Okay, a couple of other things that come from this now. First off, we heard Marty Smith asking this question. Let me stay with these guys for another minute here. We heard Marty Smith asking this question. Is this really a better opportunity, Paul? LSU obviously is a blue blood, if you will.

And Ole Miss is not. But Ole Miss is going to the playoff this year and LSU is not. Is this really a step up for Lane Kiffin?

Well the easy answer is LSU is a much better job, but that is until you look at the last couple of years when Ole Miss has been the better program and is infinitely better right now. Ole Miss fired its coach and paid him 53 – LSU fired its coach and paid him $53 million. So it looks like a better program for this reason.

National championships seem to come to LSU. Saban won one, Les Miles won one, Ogeron won one with Joe Burrows. Ole Miss hasn't won a national championship in college football since John Kennedy was president. So that's why it looks that way.

But in many ways, Lane Kiffin had a much better program where he was until yesterday.

Now, the other piece of this that I think is significant to this moment is how the committee, the College Football Playoff Committee, will handle this situation. An Ole Miss team that clearly has earned its way into the playoff, Josh, will now go without its head coach

and perhaps some of the assistant coaches, to the best of my knowledge, we're still waiting to see how that part of it shakes out specifically. How should the college football playoff committee handle Ole Miss?

Well, you said how should it. There shouldn't be an issue because if you earned it on the field, you should be in. Said the same thing about FSU two years ago, but how I feel, it's gotta be placed over here on this shelf for a second. Their own criteria suggests that they are allowed to basically determine

the value of a player, i.e. Jordan Travis going out for the season for FSU two years ago, they took it upon themselves to define his value and say, we're not gonna put him in anymore. Well now that same bullet point actually Green, if you look at the playoff criteria says, we're also allowed to define how much a coach is worth.

And if coaches, in this case plural, leave, we're allowed to sort of reassess your resume. Forget about the 12 games you played on the field, forget about the players and all that. We're gonna let 12 people sitting in a committee room in Grapevine, Texas, decide how much the departing people are worth. or worth and that's why I'm going to be glued to that playoff rankings reveal tomorrow night. I think they should be in I don't even think this should be in the criteria,

but the bottom line is it is in there whether I like it or not. And that is the big storyline going into tomorrow night.

Give everyone here one chance to jump in. I want to read a tweet from Dan Orlovsky yesterday. Cindy C9. If you would Dan you tweeted yesterday, the people who set the CFB calendar should be absolutely ashamed of themselves, ashamed, utter embarrassment, and should 100% cost people their jobs. Dan, explain that tweet.

Well, because what is Lane Kiffin supposed to do? Unequivocally, everyone would sit here and tell you, top five job in college football, LSU. Unquestionably, the chance to legitimately go win a national championship, and not a ton of schools can say that and so he's left with the decision because of the

Way the calendar is set up and Josh pointed out minutes ago He's left with the decision of I just took this team to the brink of the playoff and a potential national championship And seeing that through or turning down what maybe is the next step what maybe is a dream job? What maybe is a dream job, what maybe is, in his words, he said, the next challenge. So, Lane Kiffin's the bad guy here because these idiots who set this college football

calendar this way, that's not Lane Kiffin's fault. If we remove all the emotion, what is he supposed to do? Truly not take the next step because poor calendar management and setting of dates, that's not fair to Lane Kiffin. It's not fair to the kids. I feel awful for the kids at Ole Miss. But this is the people, the leadership of the NCAA once again, once again,

having awful leadership when it comes to that stuff.

Rex, you were talking to me about this this morning. What's your big-picture take?

Yeah, I mean, big-picture take is, look, I don't blame Lane Kiffin for going after it. I mean, look at the landscape of college football, which I think is absolutely abysmal. Not just the calendar, but the fact you let kids bail all the time, free agents. You know what, I'm gonna make more money, D. Wood, if I go to this place or whatever.

What is the difference? And to people that are killing Lane Kiffin, he's the one that built that program. He's the one. His leadership, his talents as a football coach, and the guys he hired, and all that type of stuff.

And so look, yeah, I mean, does he look like a monster? It's easy for all of us to say, oh, hell no, he should have stayed, all that kind of stuff. That's not the real world. Because everybody that's saying it would have chasen that job at LSU and the way more money and everything else

that that job brings. And so to me, no, he is not the monster in this case.

I want quick takes, go ahead, Chaffee.

He was making $7 million a year at Ole Miss. What I don't understand from the outside is why didn't Ole Miss step up and pay him? College football has become one big money grant. And to your point, Rex, would anybody in any line of work pass up a $5 million a year raise

to move on somewhere else?

No. Let me get Paul in here, because he's living in this thing every single day. Go ahead, Paul.

First of all, the money was going to be the same everywhere. Ole Miss was not going to let him get away for a couple million dollars. I just want to clarify that.

Continue.

That's a good point.

Very good. And Dean Wood, give me a final thought from you.

Listen, I just feel for the kids. Imagine you going through a season. You got an opportunity to win a national championship. You got an opportunity to win a national championship and the adults in this situation destroy any opportunity that these kids might have winning a national championship.

But listen, at the end of the day,

LSU is a better job.

It's a better job. And who's not gonna go for the promotion in this situation, you know, if you're laying kids.

The last thing I'll say, for the college football playoff committee, someone better have leadership in that room. Because if you leave that team out because of what has transpired from the head coaching perspective Once again a shame on you the final words from you guys Paul Feinbaum final word

Well, first of all, they're not they're not going to leave them out But I think when we talk about Lane Kiffin is in this moment You have to look at the entire picture of Lane Kiffin He has done this before he walked out on Tennessee after one year to go to his ultimate dream job, Southern Cal. That ended badly. He walked out on other schools. So, don't forget that Lane Kiffin was fired at Alabama after he already took another job. He was fired

because he didn't prepare his team for a playoff game. And Nick Saban, one week before the National Championship game, got rid of his offensive coordinator. The thing that is so irritating to friends of Lane Kiffin and I consider myself one is that he rehabilitated himself and then he did it again. This is a vicious cycle in the history of Lane Kiffin. Final word, Josh Pate and remember to add to Paul's point there. I agree with what coach said, what Dan said, what Dee Wood said. Everyone on that desk is right with how they characterize the LSU job.

But Lane Kiffin was radioactive for a long time. He wanted the Florida job for a long time. He would love LSU, would have loved it for a long time. They wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole because his reputation was in the gutter after Saban quite literally fired him the week of a national championship game, which is just absurd. He goes to FAU and then it's Ole Miss that said, we'll take a chance on you.

We'll give you a shot. And they're looking at it a little over half a decade later saying, look, taking the LSU job is one thing, but the way you treated this job on the way out,

that's what they're going to have a problem it here for the moment. We will come back to this with this entire group and have much more to say about it. Obviously, it is the story of the sports moment. Okay, so obviously this is what everyone was talking about. Everyone on my desk wants to get in on this as well, and they will, but I've got Josh Payton, Paul Feinbaum here to offer the perspective.

We dove a little bit into the mechanics of this in our first hour this morning, for those of you just joining us, and how the calendar is set up, or a decision of this kind needs to be made at a time like this, which is just steadfastly ridiculous. That said, Paul, all of that aside, does Lane Kiffin come out of this looking like the villain?

Yes, he does, and it's self-inflicted. And what he just told Marty Smith three years ago, he said the exact same thing about Ole Miss when he turned down Auburn. He stayed because of his family and unfortunately for Lane Kiffin, as great a coach as he is, he still doesn't have a championship as a head coach by the way, he keeps bringing all this on and part of it is he's always looking around. He has wandering eyes.

Last year, had Florida done the right thing and fired Billy Napier, Lane Kiffin would have taken that job. This year, the better job is LSU. Three years from now, what if Alabama comes open? You don't think he wants that job? He was begging for that job two years ago

after Nick Saban retired.

So Josh Pate, that begs then the question. We live in an entirely new universe in college football now where money drives everything and the portal means everything changes and reshuffles pretty much every single year. So I understand that in the college football, most of us have always known LSU was a definitively better job than Ole Miss.

But is that still the case? Ole Miss is in the playoff this year. They have a chance to win the championship. LSU does not. Does he have a better job now than he had yesterday?

On the surface, yes. The coach said something in the first hour that I want to reiterate. There are many people who believe, and I would assume Lane does as well, that any success that's coming to Ole Miss right now, he's largely responsible for. Now you juxtapose that on the shelf next to what LSU has been, which is where every coach this millennium, aside from Brian Kelly, has won a national championship. Ed won one, Ed Orgeron won one, Les Miles won one.

And so the thinking is the best at LSU is sort of the expectation, or the best at Ole Miss is the expectation at LSU. Some people call that sort of purple and gold propaganda. I think there's some validity to it, but that's in a vacuum. Like Paul just said, this didn't happen in a vacuum. This is specific to Lane Kiffin.

He was at LSU. They're the ones that gave him a shot over half a decade ago, when no one else would touch him. And six years later, he's got him on the precipice. They're in the playoff. if you wanted to find out what was possible at Ole Miss, it's right there in front of you, which is why, to your point, Greeney, I don't really know that there's a right answer to it

as far as who's the villain, who made the right and the wrong move, because you got to kind of be in the weeds and in the sauce there to have even experienced it to answer it.

Paul, how should the playoff committee treat Ole Miss now, now as it will be without its head coach and possibly some of its assistant coaches as well?

Well, they should ignore it. They should look at what's happening on the field, but if you want to trust this playoff committee, Greeney, do it at your own risk because I don't ever trust them when you put 12 or 13 people in a room. Now, the difference is you have Lane, you would have had Lane Kiffin as your head coach. Now you have Pete Golding. Anybody heard of him? Not really. Is he a better coach than Lane Kiffin?

No, he's a far inferior coach, but he still has the same team. So what does he get out of that team? I think they should stay where they are, but I don't trust this committee to do that.

Many of us will remember when Bo Schembechle They decided we were going to have a Michigan man at Michigan. I know it's a different sport, but they went on and won a national championship. It would be hilarious to watch Ole Miss do exactly that this year and probably not impossible. I want to put a tweet up, Josh Pate, from Rick Pitino. Yes, that Rick Pitino. Because he's paying attention and he wrote,

I'm not knocking football, but there's something wrong with their calendar. I'm at St. John's and we're potentially a one seed and can win a national championships this year and I leave in March. What's going on here? Josh, answer Rick's question. What is going on here?

You mentioned we're in a whole new universe in college football. So imagine the world and there's no ozone layer. So just any old asteroid that wants to hit can hit. In college football, we're void of discernible leadership. There are people making decisions. They aren't qualified people.

They're people that aren't talented enough to have real jobs, and so they're sort of in the bureaucratic, administrative universe, and they're nameless, they're faceless. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, Granny, and so imagine it in NFL terms,

to steal Rick's line of thinking there. In the NFL, it would be like having the draft the week of conference championship games, like we're about to have in college football. And then it would be like having the free agency period in the middle of the playoffs maximize your, it maximize your get there. You got to have a head coach in place. And so what's, what's your alternative. You got to have your search in the middle of the season and you're going to go after qualified coaches.

Qualified coaches are disproportionately in their own playoff run. And so you got a guy at the end of the day, like Lane Kiffin, who already loves to be the center of attention and loves the theatrical aspect anyway,

placed in the middle of the worst situation imaginable. And that's why that got so combustible and why this blew up because we got an untenable position and a dude who loves being in that spotlight part of the untenable

I want to give everyone a shot at the desk because people everyone here is so dying to get

I got a question though like to me when they fired Brian Kelly did LSU know you talk about a coaching search. They really have a current coaching search or what was it? Lane Kiffin period.

Josh, what's the answer to that?

I think they thought it was Lane Kiffin period, but you look, Paul would know this better than me. You try and fill, you're trying to figure out Lane Kiffin's like trying to nail Jello to the wall. You hope, and you just trust your LSU. You got infinite resources. He won't say no to us. And in the end, they were right. But anyone who tells you down there, they weren't nervous.

They didn't have the pit stains going on in the middle of winter. They would be lying to you.

What do you think, Paul?

Absolutely. Now, now remember Lane Kiffin is not the, is not the puppet master. The puppet master of all this, Greeny, is somebody that most people don't know out in the hinterlands, but everybody on this panel knows, his name is Jimmy Sexton. He's with CAA and he calls most of the shots in college football.

And I hear some laughter there.

There's the conspiracy.

Because there's a bit, because it's like, yeah.

He's Rex's agent, but okay, go on.

There's so much, yeah, I mean, yeah. He's the agent here and he controls almost all of them, not everyone, but most of the major coaches. So yesterday when this coaching carousel went on, when Kiffin went here, about seven or eight or nine of Jimmy Sexton's clients started going elsewhere and he's the one who places

them all and sets the market price.

You're hanging out with Jimmy all the time. I got nothing from you. Shafty's mad.

He could have broken this story weeks ago. Jimmy, for crying out loud. I think everybody knew Lane Kiffin was going to LSU. I was getting texts about it a week in advance. A week. And I'm sure it was going on

beyond that. And it just seemed like the whole thing was staged to where yesterday he finally could say,

at this point in time, once the I had been over, right? Is that correct? Yes. That he could say that he was over. They won the Egg Bowl on Friday. But I thought he had to spend a night with his family in prayer. He said jokingly.

I think his prayers were done well in advance.

Yeah, me too. Orlovsky, quick take.

I hope Ole Miss wins the national title.

Me too.

Feel terrible for their kids. Me too. I am rooting for them. dragging Lane Kiffin's name, and I don't know Lane Kiffin at all. What were his options? Stay at Ole Miss? That's it. It was because of the calendar. It was either stay at Ole Miss or, and turn down a better opportunity, I guess.

What he perceives to be a better job.

Right. Or a program that has a richer history, a richer recruiting background. So do that or experience what we're experiencing. And I think just to just drag his name and make him out to be this villain guy, his hands were in many ways tied because of the calendar.

That's probably right, but Paul, it's his history that now all of a sudden, what happens is he's a person for whom the benefit of the doubt, to Dan's point, does not fully apply, right?

That is correct. And I won't bore the audience with his history. It's easy to find, but it's almost everywhere he's ever been. It's ended in ashes. And that's why a point made earlier by Josh, Ole Miss gave him a chance when he got the Ole Miss job. He didn't have very many options. He was looking at Arkansas and Ole Miss.

He was begging for work and finally Ole Miss, a reputable SEC school, gave him. He turned the program around. He made it a winner and what did he, what happened next? He does what he always does. He leaves. He leaves it in ashes and

he leaves chaos behind. Dee Wood, final thought from you. I just feel bad for the

kids. Yeah. I mean that's, to me. We talk about all the all the different people in this

Josh pay final word.

I want to it's crazy. Cause like every point being made here, everyone agrees with. I would suggest, you notice we haven't talked about John Summerall this morning, Greeny. And people are like, who? John Summerall just took the Auburn job. John Summerall is coaching in a conference championship game this weekend at Tulane. It was in a very similar situation to Lane, difference being the theater did not exist around it. And John handled it pretty well and kind of resisted that spotlight. And so like to Dan or Lofsky's point, everything he's saying about the LSU job compared to the Ole Miss job is correct. But I think people are dragging lane a little bit more for the way he handled it

But I think people are dragging lane a little bit more for the way he handled it publicly more so than, Oh, I'll dare him. Take the LSU job.