From Ole Miss to LSU, Lane Kiffin pulls a Sonny Dykes — with one big exception | Opinion
The latest college football coaching cycle is the most outrageous, gross and bingeworthy ever, easily eclipsing the 2021 period that saw TCU’s Gary Patterson “resign,” Brian Kelly leave Notre Dame, Lincoln Riley bolt on Oklahoma for USC, and Florida nab Billy Napier.
The Lane Kiffin drama illustrates a problem in college football that is in desperate need of a solution that a team from Oxford should tackle. Not Oxford, Mississippi. Oxford University.
These coaching cycles, and contract talks, now eclipse the game. It makes college football coaches look like even worse examples of the raging hypocrites than they normally are.
Among obscene contracts, nauseating buyout figures, agents, and now exits during the middle of historic seasons, the football coach increasingly has little in common with the university he ostensibly represents. Big-time athletic departments have for decades operated separate from the rest of the school, but in today’s culture the only thing the two share in common is a logo.
TCU coach Sonny Dykes was a willing participant in these annual hurricanes when he was the head coach at SMU in the fall of 2021.
“There’s a lot of factors at play here. It’s not easy, it’s very complex, very complicated. And so we have what we have right now, which is a mess,” Dykes said last week when asked about this problem. “It’s not good for the institution.
“It’s not good for the players, it’s not good for the coaches, it’s not good for anybody. But unfortunately, there’s no other way to do it.”
There may not be a better way to do it, but there has to be a less disgusting way than what we have witnessed in 2025.
Sonny Dykes’ interview timeline
In the fall of ‘21, SMU was enjoying another good season in the American Athletic Conference, and Dykes was a top coaching target. While coaching his team in the fall, he was going through the interview process with other schools, namely TCU and Texas Tech. Standard college football coaching practice.
SMU offered him more to stay, but he wanted to go to a school in a higher-profile conference. The whole scenario was awkward, especially in SMU’s final two games, both losses, which bruised what had been a good season.
By the time of SMU’s last home game, on Nov. 27, word was out he was on his way to Fort Worth. Dykes became a pariah on the Hilltop, where he remains regarded mostly as a traitor.
Unlike Kiffin, however, Dykes made no plea to coach SMU’s postseason game.
Lane Kiffin’s departure to LSU establishes a new low
Kiffin is bailing on the sixth-ranked team in the nation that will be invited to the College Football Playoff. According to Kiffin’s Twitter account, he asked Ole Miss to let him coach the team through the end of the season, which he said he had the full support of the players.
The Ole Miss administration justifiably told him he can burn in LSU. Something like that. An SEC coach asked his bosses if it was OK coach their SEC team, while he was working for rival SEC institution.
Kiffin is delusional, the coach who wants to eat/drink his chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, Dairy Queen Blizzard, peanut butter cookies, M&Ms, Butterfingers, cherry pie and six-pack of Shiner at the same sitting without the guilt, shame or calories.
You are free to leave, but that doesn’t mean you stay.
This is not like the case of North Texas coach Eric Morris who recently accepted the head coaching job at Oklahoma State. Morris has the blessing of both the UNT and OSU administrations to remain with the Mean Green through the AAC title game, and playoffs, should the latter happen.
Morris is coaching a Group of Five team, and leaving for the Big 12. UNT is well aware of the differences, and is acting accordingly.
College football needs coaching hire parameters
Unlike the NFL, which has strict rules and protocols about hiring coaches, NCAA football is unregulated. This leads to schools firing coaches in Week 4, and search firms immediately reaching out to agents of employed coaches to gauge their interest.
This happens during a fall calendar that overlaps on high school recruiting, the transfer portal window, the playoffs, and then school itself.
“The hard thing about college football is college football players are students, OK? So there’s a spring semester and a fall semester,” Dykes said.
Who knew?
It’s true. College football players are indeed college students. Well, most of them. Some of them. At least a few.
“There’s all kind of messes that you have to deal with because of the calendar also, too,” Dykes said. “Now, when (schools) make coaching changes three, four games into the season, like they do now, that creates their own set of problems where you know you’re coaching a team, and everybody knows that you’re probably going to be coaching another team, and that’s not a good situation. Not good for the players, not good for the coaches, not good for anybody.”
It’s always been this way, but now it is worse, louder, messier, and just more gross, than ever.
There has to be a less disgusting way.
This story was originally published November 30, 2025 at 9:17 PM.
