Adam Schefter assigns blame after Lane Kiffin becomes LSU's new head coach

Who is at fault after Lane Kiffin decided to bolt Ole Miss for the LSU job? ESPN's Adam Schefter thinks his old school should have done more. Insiders suggest they did.

Ole Miss should have offered Lane Kiffin more money to prevent the head coach from leaving for LSU, according to Adam Schefter. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The decision by Lane Kiffin to become the next head coach at LSU has the potential to rewrite the pecking order in the SEC and possibly in the national championship picture for years to come, but it also deprives Ole Miss of its highly-accomplished coach.

Naturally the question tends to arise, did Kiffin’s old school do enough to keep him on their sideline? ESPN insider Adam Schefter thinks more of the attention should be placed on the role of Ole Miss in the process.

Or more precisely, why they didn’t do enough in his view to keep the head coach who has put the school in position to win a national championship.

Did Ole Miss do enough?

“He was making $7 million a year at Ole Miss. What I don’t understand from the outside is, why didn’t Ole Miss step up and pay him?” Schefter said, according to On3 Sports.

He added: “College football has become one big money grab. Would anybody in any line of work pass up a $5 million a year raise to go somewhere else? No.”

What the numbers suggest

That analysis appears to be a little off on the actual numbers, though.

Kiffin was being paid $9 million per season to coach at Ole Miss, and the school was considering giving him a serious raise comparable to what LSU ultimately offered him.

Kiffin’s new contract will be worth a total of $91 million over the next seven years, for an average annual salary of $13 million per season, a raise of about $4 million per year from what Ole Miss was paying him, according to LSU’s term sheet.

What Ole Miss offered Kiffin

Most reporting suggests that the Rebels were willing to match, or at least very nearly match, what LSU was offering in order to keep him at the school.

Moreover, Ole Miss was also willing to give Kiffin similar resources in terms of roster investment and a bigger salary pool for attracting the best assistants, and had made every effort to make him believe he could win a title there.

If so, that would challenge the narrative that Ole Miss wasn’t doing enough on its end to keep the head coach who put the team in position to contend for the national title.

Why did he actually leave then?

Instead, it appears that Kiffin felt going to LSU offered him his best opportunity to take the helm of a traditional blue-blood program that would boost his own legacy.

“Kiffin didn’t believe he’d get a premier job again,” a CBS Sports report said, “not after he crashed and burned at USC.”

It added: “He’d privately complain about the [Ole Miss] fanbase and whether the program’s recent success was sustainable, especially compared to more historically successful programs like Florida and LSU.” 

The report adds that Kiffin “was getting restless, even telling one confidant before the season he felt he was ‘ready for change.’” 

It also claims that someone near the coach said, “He needs something to chase. Once you have conquered all and there is nothing left to chase, it’s time to go.”

From what insiders have reported, it sounds like there was nothing that Ole Miss could do to keep Lane Kiffin around.

(On3)