Almost Kiffin – “It’s All Happening” With Lane Train To LSU For $90 Million-Plus Contract Over 7 Years … Unless

November 26, 2025 Glenn Guilbeau LSU Football News 0
Lane Kiffin may be coaching his last game as Ole Miss head coach on Friday at Mississippi State before possibly becoming LSU's next football coach. (Ole Miss photo).

By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

Until he signs a contract offer reportedly worth $90 million plus incentives over seven years on the dotted line to be LSU’s next football coach, it might not be true.

But as of Wednesday, it was looking more and more like LSU will be getting Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin to be its next coach over Thanksgiving weekend, and maybe come Monday, Dec. 1, in the flesh on the LSU campus at a press conference.

Kiffin would be close to the highest paid college coach in the country at LSU at approximately $13 million a year. Georgia coach Kirby Smart, who won national championships in 2021 and ’22, is the highest paid at the moment at $13.3 million a year.

“It’s all happening,” as Kate Hudson’s Penny Lane character exalts in the 2000 rock ‘n’ roll movie classic “Almost Famous.”

And Kiffin, 50 but with the boyish good looks of a 35-year-old, is unquestionably the rock star of college football at the moment – with baggage yes, but also sizzling appeal. In his fourth head coaching job since becoming the youngest NFL head coach in history at the time in 2007 with the Oakland Raiders at 31 (only to be fired early the next season with a 5-15 record), Kiffin has won more than any Ole Miss coach in history since Johnny Vaught in the 1950s and ’60s.

But he was fired early in his fourth season at USC in 2013 amid a a 3-2 start and 10-8 (5-6 Pac-12) mark from 2012-13. He did leave Tennessee after just one season in 2009 at 7-6. And one of his mentors, then-Alabama coach Nick Saban, did make him start his new job as Florida Atlantic’s head coach early by exiting him a week before the national championship game of the 2016 season, because he didn’t like his general behavior at the time.

Yet, if Kiffin’s No. 7 Rebels (10-1, 6-1 Southeastern Conference) win at Mississippi State (5-6, 1-6 SEC) on Friday (11 a.m., ABC), he will be the first Ole Miss coach ever to win 11 games in a regular season. He became the first to win 10 in a regular season in 2021 in just his second season. He was thought to be about to become Auburn’s new head coach after the 2022 season, but he turned down Auburn to stay at Ole Miss and is in his sixth season now.

Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter and president Glenn F. Boyce asked Kiffin in a meeting on Friday to come up with a decision about his future – staying at Ole Miss or going to LSU or Florida – by this Saturday.

Kiffin would be the first true offensive coordinator/quarterbacks/receivers coach who is a progressive play calling expert ever to become LSU’s head coach. Previous LSU head coaches Gerry DiNardo and Les Miles held offensive coordinator titles as assistant coaches prior to LSU, but they were basically offensive line coaches geared toward the run as play callers.

But Kiffin has not been a pass-crazed play caller as a head coach. His Ole Miss teams have always thrived in the running game, and he has had excellent defenses behind great hires at defensive coordinator, including present DC Pete Golding.

LSU, meanwhile, in addition to the contract, is also promising a donor-based, revenue sharing total of approximately $25 million a year of Name, Image & Likeness cash for talent procurement.

A high ranking LSU source told Tiger Rag Wednesday morning that Kiffin and LSU interim head coach/recruiting expert Frank Wilson have been talking recruiting regularly in recent days. That could just be reconnaissance and intel, similar to Kiffin’s family members visiting Baton Rouge on Nov. 17 and Gainesville, Florida, on Nov. 16 to look at potential homes and schools. But the early signing day period begins Wednesday Dec. 3 and runs through Friday, and Wilson has been successfully holding together the Tigers’ 12th-ranked Class of 2026 by 247sports.com at 16 commitments with only one de-commitment since Wilson replaced fired coach Brian Kelly on Oct. 26.

Wilson has known Kiffin for at least 16 years as he was wide receivers coach at Tennessee in 2009 when Kiffin was head coach of the Volunteers. Former LSU coach Ed Orgeron, a close friend of Wilson’s, was also on that Tennessee staff as recruiting coordinator and associate head coach. Orgeron and Kiffin go back to their days as fellow assistant coaches at USC in the early to mid-2000s and again when Orgeron coached under Kiffin as USC’s head coach from 2010-13. Orgeron, an ace recruiter like Wilson, possibly could join Kiffin’s potential staff at LSU.

And as of Tuesday, Florida officials were beginning to go to plan B of their coaching search and move on from Kiffin in case Kiffin does not choose the Gators. Ole Miss officials were also beginning to look elsewhere.

Yes, it’s all been happening … since last Friday.

Even Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry “has blessed the university’s lucrative pursuit of Kiffin,” former Baton Rouge Advocate writer Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports reported Friday.

Tiger Rag confirmed Wednesday that Landry particularly likes the contract being for seven years and not 10, which was the case with fired coach Brian Kelly. Former LSU athletic director Scott Woodward, whom Landry advised the LSU Board of Supervisors that he selects to fire, signed Kelly to a $100 million, 10-year contract after the 2021 season. Kelly would’ve been 70 by the time that contract expired. Kiffin will only be 57 in the last year of his first contract at LSU, if it stays at seven years.

Landry called Kelly’s contract “terrible” on Oct. 29, and Woodward was fired on Oct. 30. LSU still owes Kelly a $54 million buyout after Woodward’s firing of Kelly, apparently without cause and for not winning enough in Woodward’s words on Oct. 26. LSU officials have been trying to negotiate Kelly down from that buyout by recently contending it is now firing Kelly with cause, but that has not been successful as of yet.

Despite LSU’s usual baggage with the Board of Supervisors and a trail of governors getting involved with football going back to Huey Long in the 1930s, LSU is on the verge of hiring the hottest coach in the history of its program. And while national, regional and local media have cried that Landry’s involvement and the general mess concerning the powers that be at LSU and Kelly’s contract battle would push candidates away.

“Football coaches coach,” LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry told Tiger Rag in a recent interview. “They have a job to do. If you win, there’s no problem. If your teams play well, and you do what you’re supposed to, then there’s not going to be any politics involved. It’s winning and losing. When we made the change with Brian Kelly, it wasn’t about politics. It was about we saw the program needing a change and needed to be better than what we were seeing on Saturday nights. I don’t think politics are involved with this search here.” 

LSU chancellor Mark Emmert made rising coach Nick Saban one of the highest paid college football coaches in the country in 1999 when he hired him away from Michigan State for $1.2 million a year. Saban, 48 at the time, had drawn interest from NFL teams as a head coach because of his NFL assistant coaching experience, but he was not as hot or accomplished then as Kiffin is now. Saban’s best two seasons as a head coach were 9-2 at Toledo in 1990 and 9-2 at Michigan State in 1999.

While Michigan State’s head coach, Saban had three six-win seasons, including a loss to LSU and coach Gerry DiNardo in the 1995 Independence Bowl, and a 7-5 season before the 9-2 mark. He was also fired as Ohio State’s defensive backs coach after the 1981 season. Saban also brought baggage to LSU as not one of his Michigan State assistants decided to join him at LSU.

Saban, like Kiffin now, had trouble making up his mind about the LSU job and the Miami Dolphins job after LSU. He said later, he considered going back to Michigan State after his introductory LSU press conference. And he changed his mind multiple times before leaving LSU to take the Dolphins job after the 2004 season.

Saban went on to become the rock star of college football, winning LSU’s first national championship since 1958 in the 2003 season along with SEC titles in 2001 and ’03. After the 2005 and ’06 seasons at Miami, he didn’t like being an NFL coach after all, and he returned to college as Alabama’s coach. Saban, now 74, won six national championships at Alabama from the 2009 through 2020 seasons and retired after the 2023 season with the most national titles by any coach overall with seven.

Kiffin was Saban’s offensive coordinator during the 2015 national championship season and drastically transformed Saban’s Alabama program with a more modern passing game from 2014-16 as offensive coordinator.

A Tiger Rag source said Saban has advised Kiffin through their shared agent – Jimmy Sexton of Memphis – to take the LSU job.

It’s only a matter of time now before Kiffin is LSU’s coach … unless he decides to stay at Ole Miss or go to Florida.

With Kiffin, one never knows, until it’s over.

While passing the turkey Thursday, Football America will wait.

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