Why Ole Miss Rebels' Lane Kiffin Won't Take Texas A&M Job
A Power Five head coaching job comes open? Lane Kiffin's name is mentioned as a candidate. Rinse, repeat.
This seems to be the trend in college football these days, and part of it is a compliment to the job that Kiffin has done with the Ole Miss Rebels. He has stated before that your name being mentioned for job openings means that you have been successful at your current stop, and he's right. Still, after last season's fiasco surrounding the Auburn Tigers job, Rebels fans have grown tired of Kiffin's name being tied to openings, especially within the SEC.
The latest installment of this comes from the Texas A&M Aggies.
As soon as Jimbo Fisher was fired in College Station, Kiffin's name was one of the first mentioned as a possible candidate as his replacement, and Ole Miss fans seemed to react negatively on social media. That's understandable, but let's go "inside baseball" for a moment and talk about the situation at hand.
First, at this stage of coaching searches, everything is speculation. An early list that includes Kiffin or any other coach with the Aggies is purely conjecture. Just because a name is mentioned as a possible candidate does not mean he is an actual candidate. It's simply the journalist's job to speculate at that juncture: who might make sense in this new opening? Kiffin has been successful at Ole Miss, Texas A&M has nearly unlimited resources, and a pairing could theoretically work.
That doesn't mean that Kiffin would consider a job at Texas A&M. He might; I'm not inside his head, but there are plenty of reasons why he would elect to stay at Ole Miss.
For starters, the expectations at Texas A&M are different right now, fair or not. The Aggies seem to expect to compete for national championships given the amount of money that is available for the program, but over the last few seasons, Ole Miss has been a more successful place than A&M. Ole Miss fans may complain about losing a game to Georgia, but at the end of the day, a 10- or 11-win season is more than enough to satisfy current expectations in Oxford.
Soon, the Rebels will want to be in the running for a national championship, but with the coming expansion of the College Football Playoff, that becomes a real possibility beginning next season.
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin
© Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK
Second, the question of "cultural fit" certainly comes into play. I'm not in College Station, nor am I intimately familiar with the fan base culture of Texas A&M, but I can attest to the fact that Kiffin fits extremely well at Ole Miss. The Rebels fan base has latched onto his brand, and one could argue that his presence itself is the branding for the football program over the last few seasons.
Finally, it seems Kiffin himself might realize how well he has it made at Ole Miss. Some may interpret his comments earlier this week as vague, and maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it sounds to me like the Texas A&M opening is the last thing on his mind right now.
"I’m not going there again," Kiffin told reporters. "I should’ve been prepared for that question, I wasn’t. I’m not answering that... We got back in here late and been in here watching that disaster film [from UGA], worrying about our own problems. I’ve not paid any attention to (Fisher's firing)."
Again, maybe Lane Kiffin would consider a job at Texas A&M. Money talks, and the Aggies have plenty of it, but if I were to place a bet today, I would bet on Texas A&M's next head coach not being Lane Kiffin.
