Any time Lane Kiffin gets behind a microphone, it’s an event — or, at the very least it has the potential to be one.
Over his career, the Ole Miss football coach has been less guarded in interviews, public remarks and on social media than many of his peers in a famously tight-lipped profession.
At SEC Media Days this week, he showed yet again why few figures, if any, in college football offer up the entertainment value he consistently does.
While speaking with ESPN college football analyst Paul Finebaum on his eponymous SEC Network show, Kiffin went to the longtime sports radio host for comments he made about Kiffin while he was the head coach at USC 11 years ago.
In 2013, Kiffin was fired five games into his underwhelming fourth season with the Trojans. The move was famously made shortly after his team landed at Los Angeles International Airport following a 62-41 loss at Arizona State.
While speaking with Finebaum, Kiffin discussed what he believed to be the role the pundit had in his termination.
It is a true story that the athletic director and the president were on that trip,” Kiffin said. “We were playing that night and you were on ‘College GameDay’ and you had to make your big splash. They were watching it because I know the other person in the room that was watching it with them. And you said what a joke I was, I’m the Miley Cyrus of college football coaching and I should be fired. They looked at each other and later that night, I was fired.”
When Finebaum responded with something of a mea culpa, noting that Kiffin’s Ole Miss team is a viable contender for the 2024 College Football Playoff and that Cyrus has enjoyed a resurgence in her musical career, Kiffin kept coming at him like a wrecking ball.
“So you were wrong on that,” Kiffin said. “I mean, you put me down with that. Really, I don’t know what you’re good at. You predicted Coach Saban was done. That didn’t happen. You basically said Miley Cyrus stinks and she’s still going.”For all the jabs he threw at Finebaum, Kiffin offered up some praise and thankfulness, acknowledging that had he never been fired at USC, he would not have gotten the chance to learn under Nick Saban for three seasons as Alabama’s offensive coordinator before re-entering the head-coaching ranks at Florida Atlantic and, now, Ole Miss.
Kiffin’s fifth Rebels team may very well end up being his best. With several key contributors back from a 2023 squad that went 11-2 and thumped Penn State in the Peach Bowl, as well as a number of highly touted additions from the transfer portal, Ole Miss is widely projected as a top-10 team entering the 2024 season.
The Rebels are 34-15 in five seasons under Kiffin, with two top-15 finishes in the US LBM Coaches Poll.