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This isn't the first time that Lane Kiffin has abruptly left a college football program in the lurch. But his departure from the University of Mississippi for Louisiana State University was particularly jarring, even by Kiffin's standards.
Ole Miss, as the school is commonly known, had just completed an 11-win regular season ( a first in its history) and is poised to make its first College Football Playoff appearance.
Naturally, some critics are calling Kiffin's departure a betrayal. That misses the point. The self-proclaimed "portal king" built Ole Miss's winning roster by embracing the transactional nature of college football's NIL era. In switching jobs for a superior opportunity - LSU's program enjoys better athletic funding, a bigger stadium and a championship pedigree - he applied the same market logic to himself.
Ole Miss might feel wronged by the outcome, but would it ever reject the system that enabled Kiffin's rise and departure? It's unlikely. If the university wants to keep winning at football, it'll have to keep playing the cutthroat game he taught it.
Kiffin didn't arrive at Ole Miss by accident. When he was hired in 2019, the school was in a desperate place. Two years earlier a National Collegiate Athletic Association investigation found the school had spent years engaged in football recruiting violations. Stiff penalties were levied that squeezed future recruiting efforts and produced a 15-21 record over the next three seasons. Then-coach Matt Luke was fired, in part, because fans had grown apathetic about the team.
Kiffin was a welcome antidote. A shameless self-promoter, he brings valuable attention and excitement to any school that employs him. He's also a brilliant offensive tactician who wins everywhere he coaches, even though his tenures are short. At Ole Miss, he earned a 5-5 record during the Covid-shortened 2020 season. A year later the team went 10-3 and finished the season ranked 11th in the nation in the Associated Press poll. (Ole Miss was 10-2 in the regular season and then lost in the Sugar Bowl.)
That surge was enabled by a seismic shift in the NCAA's rules during the first half of 2021. That April, players gained the right to transfer schools without having to first sit out a season. By June, they won the right to monetize their NIL rights.
With athletes able to move freely and get paid, Kiffin saw the change for what it turned out to be: free agency. Commenting on the new economics of college football in late 2021, he was blunt: "The kids a lot of times go to where they're going to get paid the most." He's even referred to it as "legalized cheating," a nod to a not-so-distant past when athlete payments were grounds for NCAA investigations, such as those that hobbled Ole Miss in the 2010s.
But Kiffin's moral musings, for all of their admirable candor, ultimately don't amount to much more than interesting observations. Like other coaches, he's in the business of winning games, and players are the commodities that help him do it. A former National Football League coach, he approaches the college game with the same merciless methods as the pros.
His recipe for success was simple at Ole Miss. He actively supported the school's NIL collective - a pool of contributed money distributed to players. He built a personnel department stacked with college and NFL coaches and talent evaluators. And he ensured that experienced transfers, many with NFL aspirations, got the development they craved. There was an implicit promise: we will help you boost your value, whether for your next transfer, or the NFL draft.
The methods worked. Since 2022, national college football news sites have consistently ranked Ole Miss transfer classes in the top four nationally. That's a significant achievement in the NIL era, when tens of millions of dollars are spent chasing a limited amount of talent across dozens of programs. And it's especially significant at Ole Miss, a well-resourced school that still must compete with far wealthier schools in its own conference - such as the University of Alabama.
These gains didn't just elevate Ole Miss. They elevated Kiffin. Football programs in search of a turnaround specialist noticed what he accomplished in Mississippi and made their offers. LSU, in particular, offered a bigger NIL budget. That money, along with a strong high school recruiting pipeline and alumni support also give LSU a clearer shot at a national title. Having spent four years poaching players from other schools, it's only natural that Kiffin embraced his own opportunity to advance.
Ole Miss fans are understandably disappointed and angry, especially since the timing of Kiffin's departure was inopportune. Players and personnel who committed to him face uncertainty about their futures at Ole Miss. Are their roster spots and jobs secured - or will they even want to stay without Kiffin? Meanwhile, the program's momentum heading into the playoffs is now threatened.
But the institution of Ole Miss is not a victim. Its football team benefited richly during Kiffin's tenure, earning wins and national relevance it hasn't enjoyed in decades. This time, the school just got the short end of a stick in a system it has embraced and leveraged for competitive gains.
Minter is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is the author of "Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade."
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