Paul Finebaum reveals major college football job Lane Kiffin would have taken last year

Lane Kiffin is entrenched at Ole Miss amidst his sixth season with the program, the result of an odyssey in between SEC head coaching jobs which took him from USC to Alabama under Nick Saban, and even through FAU on the way.

However, SEC Network star Paul Finebaum believes Kiffin could have added yet another stop to his long-winding coaching journey: Florida.

Current Florida football coach Billy Napier has seemingly been on a hot seat ever since he opened the driver's side door in Gainesville. To be fair, his results haven't inspired confidence, either. But now stuck at 1-2 with a brutal schedule on the way, everyone can more or less see the writing on the wall for Florida football in 2025.

So, if the Gators cut the cord on Napier, is Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin a top option? According to Finebaum, no, not this time around. But he did say this week that he believes Kiffin would have left for Florida had that job opened up last offseason. When asked about the possibility of Lane heading to the blue and orange if Napier is fired, as well expect, he had this to say:

“Not right now. Lane’s always — a year ago, as I told you, he would have taken it. But it’s a year later. You don’t know.”

Napier was already under fire early in the 2024 season as well, which is when Paul Finebaum made his initial statement that Lane Kiffin should be considered for, and likely would take, the Florida job if offered, assuming Napier was fired.

“I think Lane Kiffin would be the No. 1 target," he said on a radio show during the first week of September of 2024. "Frankly, I believe that Lane Kiffin would accept it.”

A year ago, Lane Kiffin had a first-round pick leaving at quarterback plus a slew of other notable graduates or draft selections who left a squad that narrowly missed the College Football Playoff. 2025 is proving fruitful for Ole Miss, but it was always intended as a sort of rebuild year with how much production they had to replace.

So, you can see how last year might have been an ideal time for Lane Kiffin to make a blockbuster cross-conference move. But by this offseason, Kiffin might have found something with a new core of guys on this team that he believes he can mold into another contender in 2026.

Paul Finebaum didn't explain this line of thinking as the reason why Kiffin might have jumped to Florida in 2024 but not 2025, but it seems to line up. He wanted to see it through with Jackson Dart and that roster a year ago and could have reached a clean breaking point, but now that he's knee-deep in another season with a new roster of guys, the calculus may have just changed.

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