Lane Kiffin and the Messy State of College Football
A football coach’s high-profile departure reveals a lot about the sport–and America itself.
There’s a lot of news going on in the world right now. A terror attack in DC. A possible peace deal in Ukraine. Tensions over Venezuela. The list goes on and on.
But one story captured the attention of sports fans and southerners more than world crises and political conflict. Football coach Lane Kiffin’s departure from Ole Miss to rival LSU offered more drama than anything going on in Washington D.C. Kiffin just coached his team to its best year in the 21st century, with the Rebels heading to their first college football playoff ever. But Kiffin decided LSU was a better gig, and told Ole Miss officials he planned to leave at the end of the year. But he wanted to coach his team in the playoffs.
That was rejected by school leaders, who wanted the “traitor” gone immediately. Kiffin allegedly threatened to take the entire coaching staff and the Rebels’ best players with him if he wasn’t allowed to coach for the remainder of the season. Needless to say, his request wasn’t met and he left on bad terms. He was booed by Ole Miss fans as he left Oxford, Mississippi. One Rebel fan even tried to run him off the road on his way out.
He is certainly the most hated man in the Magnolia State and possibly in college football (LSU fans excepted, of course). His job change may be seen as frivolous nonsense by those not interested in sports, but it’s a deeply revealing story. It shows the current state of college football, an important part of American culture, and the state of our society itself. You could be a person who unironically says “sportsball” and still find something to care about here.
I’m a Kiffin fan. He’s a really funny character. He’s a Trump supporter. He makes the game interesting. I like how he’s a goofy asshole. He’s also a winner, despite being counted out several times in his career. College football needs more characters like him. He probably shouldn’t have left Ole Miss (I like Ole Miss, I don’t like LSU), but it’s the nature of modern college football. “Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.”
This story exemplifies the sordid nature of modern college football. Money is dramatically changing the game, arguably for the worse. That’s not to say college football was some pristine socialist experiment before the 2020s. It’s always been a money-influenced spectacle. But it at least stressed rules, traditions, and norms that restrained the greed of athletes, programs, and conferences. Then players earned the right to get paid, which now forces universities to beg donors for cash in order to bribe “scholar-athletes.” Recruitment now often centers around which programs can pay players the most, allowing the athletes to extort the schools and head elsewhere when they don’t get the right price. It was probably inevitable that this would happen, but it makes the sport tawdrier. It’s hard to fault Kiffin for leaving one program for a rival over money when many of the players do the same.
Greed now triumphs over tradition in college football. It’s why we now have a playoff that makes bowl season irrelevant and even makes the regular season less important. It’s why the PAC-12 conference is gone and west coast teams are now in the Atlantic Coast Conference. It’s why neither players nor coaches respect their programs enough to show any degree of loyalty. It’s why colleges now advertise sports betting apps to their young students. Everyone is out for the almighty dollar.
This is more of an observation than a critique. College football is a business. Businesses are bound to try to maximize profit in all available legal means. It’s up to the consumer to decide whether a business made the wrong choice. Since college football profits are booming, it seems the consumer has decided in favor of college football’s current model.
Like in America, there are winners and losers. Ole Miss couldn’t match LSU’s resources and reputation and is the loser. This is similar to how bigger businesses outcompete smaller businesses for employees and customers. It’s normal for a worker to leave one company in favor of another one that pays them more and offers them more opportunities. All Ole Miss’s fans can do is jeer at the coach that brought them to the playoffs.
College football fans don’t like to be reminded of the crass commercialism of their favorite sport. They like to think the game, unlike pro sports, transcends profit-driven motives through its traditionalism. For many Americans, their commitment to their alma mater is their culture. It’s integral to who they are, represents where they come from, and it’s not up for sale. This is especially true in the South where SEC football has replaced the Confederacy as the defining cultural symbol of the region. People don’t like the idea of their identity being altered and sold to the highest bidder. They want things to remain relatively the same. They want their players and coaches–so long as they’re good–to stick with the team. They don’t want traditions changed. They want to know that Fall Saturdays will be the same as long as they live.
But college football is a business. And like all businesses, it changes with the times and market. If traditions get in the way of profit or player recruitment, they’ll be cast aside. Ole Miss fans should know this better than anyone. The team banned Confederate flags from its stadium, discontinued playing “Dixie,” scrapped its beloved Colonel Reb mascot, and even pressured the state to change its Lost Cause-theme flag to make itself more accommodating to black recruits and a national market. Ole Miss might still play in powder blue, but the mascot on the sidelines is no longer Colonel Reb. It’s instead “Tony the Landshark,” a completely nonsensical, yet inoffensive mascot. It’s the perfect representation of corporate thinking triumphing over tradition.
It’s understandable Ole Miss fans are angry. Kiffin’s departure exposes the messiness and greed of college football. But that’s just how the sport is today. Kiffin is not a lone outlier upending the established norms of college football. He’s just another example of the chaos engulfing the beloved sport.
Personally, I hope he wins a national title with LSU. But the future may have other plans for Highly Respected’s favorite football coach…
https://www.highly-respected.com/p/lane-kiffin-and-the-messy-state-of