College Football Coaching Issues

Finally, after weeks of backing-and-forthing and rumors/counter-rumors and various declarations of inside intrigue, Lane Kiffin will become the head football coach at LSU.  Fans in the SEC can now sit back and resume their focus on their favorite team and leave the coaching intrigues alone until sometime next year when it will blossom one more time.

Lane Kiffin is – to say the least – a polarizing figure.  He has been a successful coach but not all of his relationships with the organizations that had hired him were harmonious.  He has been referred to as a diva coach and as having a “scratchy” personality/nature.  After Kiffin and USC “chose to go in different directions” in 2013, Kiffin was not highly sought after for head coaching vacancies; he took the job as offensive coordinator for Nick Saban at Alabama and had to wait four years before he got a head coaching offer – – at Florida Atlantic which is a step down from the likes of the SEC and/or USC.  But he did well at FAU and got the job at Ole Miss in 2020.

Ole Miss was not an SEC powerhouse, but Kiffin made them more than merely respectable; they were competitive with the rest of the conference on a routine basis.  He went to Oxford, MS with a rehabbed reputation and delivered on field success there.  That made him a desirable commodity for a school that aspired to national attention/prominence and LSU fits that description to a tee.  Some folks think Kiffin’s departure now with his Ole Miss team sure to be in the CFP and with an outside shot at a national championship just proves that he is a flawed human being with no loyalty in his core.

Maybe that is the case; I don’t have any way to know that.  However, I do recognize that he did for Ole Miss what they wanted him to do and made Ole Miss relevant in college football.  Having delivered on that aspect of his employment there, what is wrong with him seeking an opportunity that he considers more beneficial for him and his family?  It seems to me that too many people looked at the LSU/Ole Miss/Florida coaching triangle and thought with their glands instead of their brains.  Take the emotion out of the situation and it would not have been more than a bit of nothing instead of a month-long soap opera situation.

Moving on … but staying with college football coaching.  James Franklin was hired by Va Tech after he was fired by Penn State and according to reports yesterday and today, he has taken with him a dozen of the top recruits he had lured to Penn State with him on a journey to Blacksburg, VA.  One report I read said that “Penn State is in a free fall,” and that they will not be able to recruit well because they don’t have a coach and just got turned down by one they were pursuing.

Here is another glandular thinking situation.  The sky is not falling; in fact, what Penn State fans need to do is to inoculate themselves to irrational exuberance when the new coach arrives and sets sail for the 2026 college football season.  The Penn St. schedule next year is not a killer by any means; the new coach might show up and win 9 games and be thought of as a “football genius”.  Take a look at that schedule and assess its degree of difficulty:

• Out of conference games are Marshall, Temple and Buffalo – – all in “Happy Valley”.
• Big-10 games do NOT include Ohio St., Indiana or Oregon.
• Big-10 road games are at Northwestern Maryland, Michigan and Washington.
• Big-10 home games are against Minnesota, Purdue, Rutgers, USC and Wisconsin.

On a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is horrendously difficult, I would put that schedule on the scale at 2.0.  In fact, if all the handwringing and gnashing of teeth continue to expand, I might make Penn State my “sleeper team” for 2026.

Finally, here is a line I heard from a stand-up comedienne over the weekend:

“I am still trying to get my head around the fact that ‘Take Out’ can mean food, dating, – – or murder.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports ………