By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Just in time for one of the biggest LSU-Ole Miss games in history on Saturday, a documentary of 1959 LSU Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon called “Circles” premiered on Monday night on Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB). A Philadelphia, Mississippi, native, Cannon’s circuitous life and still iconic Halloween Night ’59 run punt return that beat the Rebels are forever entertwined with Ole Miss.
And on Tuesday morning, a book about new LSU football head coach Lane Kiffin, who just left Ole Miss last November after making it a consistent power for the first time since the late 1950s and early ’60s, was released called “Lane Being Lane – The Story of Lane Kiffin, College Football’s Agent of CHAOS.”
The book was written by John Talty, a national college football writer for CBS Sports.
All this, and the game, too, on Saturday night in Oxford, Mississippi, in the first top 10 pairing between the two border rivals since 1962? No. 7 LSU (2-0) and No. 8 Ole Miss (2-0) kick off at 6:30 p.m. on ABC.
Can’t wait to read new book on Lane Kiffin by John Talty, who was on Bama Beat when Lane was there. But, couldn’t find updated visor for Steve Spurrier reincarnated? pic.twitter.com/ncGUbhcALi
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) September 15, 2026
And when Kiffin looks across the sideline at Ole Miss and back at his team shortly before kickoff, no coach in college football history will have recruited and/or signed and coached more players on both sidelines in the history of the game. That would be 61 players on LSU’s side – 42 from the transfer portal last January and 19 from his traditional high school/junior college recruiting class. And 62 returnees from 2025 on the Ole Miss side, where Kiffin was the head coach from 2020-25. That is 123 players connected to Kiffin.
So, regardless of what happens Saturday night, if LSU and Ole Miss both reach the College Football Playoff this season, Kiffin could legitimately be given credit for both success stories – rebuilding a 7-6 LSU team into a playoff team and leaving enough players at a 13-1 Ole Miss team he built to return to the playoffs.
“There’s not always a winner and loser,” Kiffin said Monday at his weekly press conference as he discussed his departure from Ole Miss last November to its hated border big brother LSU. “It’s the most relevant match-up of these two teams in 64 years.”
LSU and Ole Miss last met as top 10 teams in 1962 when No. 6 Ole Miss beat No. 4 LSU, 15-7, in Tiger Stadium.
“Both teams being that relevant, that’s a really neat thing,” Kiffin said of his two teams – with his former one now being coached by the defensive coordinator he hired to Ole Miss in 2023, Pete Golding, after he brought eight Ole Miss assistant coaches with him to LSU.
“We were able to be part of building a program there that’s Pete’s doing a great job continuing it as a top ten program,” Kiffin said. “When we got there, they won four games (4-8 in 2019). We got here eight months ago (with a full staff in January), and they were 7-6. So, I think it’s a really good thing. And a lot of people would look at it and say, ‘Both sides are doing really well, and both sides won.'”
If both teams make CFP, Kiffin would be right. And he’d get credit for turning an average program into a playoff team and leaving enough players at another to repeat. On Saturday, there will also be more players on both sidelines recruited and coached by the same guy in history.
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) September 15, 2026
So, in Kiffin’s mind, he can’t lose on Saturday. If LSU wins, it’s the new team that he dramatically rebuilt. If Ole Miss wins, it’s his old team that he left so well off with talent – like Heisman Trophy candidates Trinidad Chambliss and Kewan Lacy at quarterback and running back – that it is still winning in his likeness.
He has a point, but Ole Miss fans are all throwing up in unison right now.
Only Kiffin can think like that, and that is one of the many reasons Talty tackled this book.
“Love him or hate him, you can’t take your eyes off of him,” Talty said on Tiger Rag and Louisiana Radio Network (LRN) president Jim Engster’s “Talk Louisiana” radio show on WRKF on Tuesday morning. “That’s how I view Lane Kiffin. I don’t think anyone has a lukewarm feeling about Lane Kiffin. When he’s your coach, you absolutely love him.”
And Ole Miss fans sure did … until that turned to bitter hatred when he left just before putting them in their first College Football Playoff, much like LSU fans turned love to hate when Nick Saban left them at the altar to go to the Miami Dolphins as head coach following the 2004 season – a year after winning the Tigers’ first national championship since Cannon and company in 1958.
“When he’s your rival, you might hate him, or maybe you begrudgingly respect him,” Talty said.
But there has been little respect from the Ole Miss side, even though Kiffin’s 2021-25 run was better than any four-year run at Ole Miss since coach Johnny Vaught’s days in the 1950s and ’60s.
Talty knows Kiffin. He covered Alabama for Al.com when Kiffin was offensive coordinator for Saban from 2014-16. Talty also knows Saban. He wrote the Wall Street Journal bestseller “The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban” that came out in 2022.
Talty covers Saban booting Kiffin from his staff the week of the national championship game in the 2016 season. Kiffin already was leaving for the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic, but he was supposed to finish coaching Alabama’s offense through the title game. But Saban thought he was distracted and out of control.
Saban discusses Kiffin’s womanizing while at Alabama in the book as well. Kiffin has been divorced from his wife Layla since February of 2016.
“He’s lived such a life at 51,” Talty told Engster.
LSU is Kiffin’s sixth head coaching job (five in college) – NFL Oakland Raiders (2007-08), Tennessee (2009), USC (2010-13), Florida Atlantic (2017-19), Ole Miss (2020-25), LSU (2026-?).
He was fired by Oakland owner Al Davis in a saga covered deeply in the book. He left Tennessee for what he thought was his dream job at USC, where he was an assistant for national championships in 2003 and ’04 under mentor Pete Carroll. But he was fired there, too.
“One of the key things about Lane Kiffin is he’s somebody who finds stability boring,” Talty said.
Kiffin tends to be stubborn, Talty said.
“When he believes he’s right, he’s not going to back off of that,” he said. “That’s why he’s such a great play caller. Lane Kiffin is used to getting his way, because he’s very talented. He can see things happening on the field before they happen.”
Sounds like Skip Bertman.
Talty has done a comprehensive book through many interviews with people who have coached with, played for or know Kiffin. But he did not get to interview Kiffin at any length.
“We sat down, but he did not end up being interviewed for the book, no,” Talty said on WNSP Radio in Mobile, Alabama, also on Tuesday.
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