Lane Kiffin Really Sucks

Lane Kiffin really sucks. I just want to point that out. I said it when Ole Miss hired him three years ago, and I’m saying it now. I’m not sure where he belongs, but it isn’t at Ole Miss or in college football at all. The NFL, probably, would be a good fit for him because he’s this CEO style football coach and his players call him by his first name, which I noted when I watched an Ole Miss video earlier this season, that all these players were dining on beef medallions and talking about Lane this and Lane that and it made me cringe.

It is possible that things will catch up to him, though. College football has for years been obviously serving as a de facto minor league for the NFL, and I think that the more overt that gets, the better. I understand that people want to hang on to this notion that these players are “student athletes” and that college football is an amateur sport, but it hasn’t been true for probably thirty years or more, and it is becoming visible now. The stuff that used to be under the table is now getting done on top. The transfer portal makes it pretty clear.

I hope, I truly hope, that big-time college football gets spun off and these teams become thier own entities divorced from the intitutions. I assume that these teams will maintain their emotional and branding tether, but that ought to be the only tether. I see no reason why these players ought to even be students at all. I mean, they aren’t anyway. They get grades given to them, and if not that, they get “tutors” that do everything but go to class for them. Just stop with all the pretending and spin off the football team, pay the players, and be done with it. Fans will accept it, no problem, as long as they keep the branding, as long as the Alabama Crimson Tide remains the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Here’s the thing: Kiffin is going to be good at using the tranfer portal because he’s an easy coach, a “players coach”. He’s no disciplinarian for football professor. He’s a CEO. I suspect that those old school coaches are all but next to extinct right now, but in ten years, the more big-time college football brings from under the table to above board, the more these coaches are Lane Kiffins.

After starting the season 7-0, this Ole Miss team finished 8-5. Texas Tech just beat them silly, with the Rebels turning over the football 5 times. At no point were the Rebels serious in this game. They were just out there lollygagging around, goofing off and whatnot. To add insult to injury, though, Kiffin used the racial slur excuse. He really did that. According to Kiffin, one of his 300 lb. players got his feelings hurt in a scrum when an opposed player used to most devasting word in the history of the English language on him, making him cry. I’m not kidding, either. Kiffin said that after getting his ass plastered on the astroturf.

When Auburn was rumored to be courting Kiffin, I was thinking, yeah, take him, please. Now Auburn has Hugh Freeze, who is a true sleaze, but who has a penchant for winning football games. On Freeze, I once had a student who worked at Como Steak House in Como, Mississippi, and Hugh Freeze stiffed her on the tip. LOL. Anyway, I was happy for Auburn to take Kiffin, and I was disappointed that they didn’t take him after all.

I’m not sure if any of it matters. If what we are witnessing is the biggest watershed in college football in decades, if we are in fact witnessing it becoming an above-board minor league for the NFL, and branding is going to be everything, what we’ll see is a resurgence of all the big brands, the Michigans, Ohio States, Notre Dames, USCs, Alabamas, and a handful of others, and Ole Miss has none of that, so I’m not sure it matters who is coaching there.