The last tea leaf is about to be read.
The last Tarot card drawn.
This is it.
Friday should be the day.
The day the Lane Kiffin saga finally begins to draw to a definable conclusion.
All the speculation, dart throwing, analyzing, and outright guessing is about to come to an end. The Lane scrutiny is about to reach a verdict. Kiffin must choose.
Stay at Ole Miss. Go to LSU. Or, possibly, Florida. Maybe the NFL.
Perhaps he will chuck the giant play sheet and decide to become a hot yoga instructor.
In most Kiffinesque fashion, Lane has squeezed the last possible drop of drama out of this theater. Friday, Ole Miss wraps up what may be its best regular season in generations, with a 10-1 record and College Football Playoff berth on the line against archrival Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl (11 a.m., ABC).
After that, by Saturday, we are told, there will be clarity on Kiffin’s future at Ole Miss.
Stay or go.
In or out.
Heads or tails?
Just kidding. It can’t be like that, can it? With Kiffin, you just never know.
One thing we all think we know, though neither Kiffin nor Ole Miss has said it: the Lane ends here. If Ole Miss goes on to the CFP, he won’t be coaching the Rebels. As much as it seems Kiffin is eager to move on to bigger things, he seems just as eager to coach Ole Miss to the conclusion of this surprising and remarkable season.
“I’ve never thought of anything different than that,” Kiffin said Monday, in possibly his last game week news conference at Ole Miss. A news conference where, once again, he did not commit to being the Rebels’ coach next season.
I don’t believe Kiffin will be allowed to coach his team in the CFP, but Ole Miss’ alternatives don’t go down like Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. Will the school fire him without cause? If it does, it will owe Kiffin $36.6 million, with no mitigation clause for taking his next job. Will it suspend him? How long could that drag out? Will Kiffin just quit, triggering a reported $4 million payment owed Ole Miss, paid — one assumes — by the school that wants to hire him?
LSU is reportedly offering a $90 million, seven-year compensation package for Kiffin plus $25 million per for roster building. By all accounts, LSU has made Kiffin its top target. Second choice is not even on the medal podium. Plan B behind Kiffin is more like a Plan 9 from Outer Space. It’s been bandied about that if LSU can’t land Kiffin it will gravitate toward Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz. That plan fizzled out Thursday when it was reported Drinkwitz agreed to a six-year contract extension wth Missouri.
We know what LSU seeks in Kiffin: an innovative offensive mind who is on the verge of leading traditionally second-tier Ole Miss to 50 wins in the past five seasons, its best stretch ever.
What is Kiffin looking for? Ole Miss has done everything he’s asked for and vows to match any other school’s financial offer. Money is important, but it must be more than that. One possible answer is that LSU is uniquely positioned geographically.
There are 14 Power Four schools that are alone in their home states — LSU, Missouri, Arkansas, Syracuse, Boston College, West Virginia, Colorado, Oregon, Nebraska, Rutgers, Maryland, Wisconsin, Washington and Minnesota — but none of those sit atop the OPEC-like reserves of in-state talent that exists in h. Per capita, Louisian produces the second-most NFL players, behind only Georgia, an enticing statistic for any coach.
Ole Miss can’t compare to LSU’s access to talent, facilities, stadium, fan base and tradition, even if the Rebels are ahead on points at the moment.
“Ole Miss’ ceiling is LSU’s expectation,” college football writer Ari Wasserman said this week.
There is still one nagging question that won’t leave my mind: What if we’re all getting played? Would it not be the most Lane Kiffin thing ever to string not one but two of Ole Miss’ SEC rivals along, making them both think he’s coming thus kneecapping their coaching searches, only to announce sometime after Friday’s game that he’s staying in Oxford?
If it were another coach, any other coach, I wouldn’t even consider the prospect. Few of them are that cunning.
Kiffin is. His cleverness and unpredictability are his strengths. Part of what makes him worth waiting for.
Perhaps Friday is the beginning of the end of the waiting. But be looking for the next curveball in this tale, just in case.
The Kelly buyout
LSU has finally agreed to say it fired Brian Kelly without cause, making the school responsible for his entire $54 million buyout. Kelly, in return, must in good faith try to land another job that would mitigate part of the buyout.
I hope one day to understand why LSU sought to fire Kelly for cause, something that could have and may still have done irreparable damage to its coaching search. Because right now, I don’t know what LSU possibly hoped to gain. It amounted to nothing more than cheap, foolish grandstanding, was bound to fail and held the school up to nationwide ridicule. It cast Kelly as a sympathetic figure, a nearly impossible task.
The one positive is that now the field is clear for LSU to hire its next coach. Why LSU had to put itself, and Kelly quite frankly, through this first remains an enormous mystery.