Lane Kiffin IS LSU’s NEXT FOOTBALL COACH As He Is Expected At LSU Press Conference Monday

November 30, 2025 Glenn Guilbeau LSU Football News 0
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has decided to replace the fired Brian Kelly as coach of the Tigers. (LSU photo).

By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

The Lane Train is coming to Baton Rouge … finally.

After a coaching search that began on Oct. 26 with the firing of Brian Kelly, LSU has its man and its original target.

Lane Kiffin has left Ole Miss to become LSU’s 35th head coach after several weeks weighing his options – staying at Ole Miss, going to LSU, or to Florida, which also courted the rising coach.

Kiffin, 50, met with his Ole Miss coaching staff on Sunday late morning/early afternoon as some of his assistants will be joining him at LSU. He planned to meet with his players Sunday afternoon to tell them he was leaving, but strangely, Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter stopped that as many of the Rebels wanted Kiffin to continue coaching the team through the College Football Playoff. Kiffin also wanted to do that, but Carter did not.

Kiffin, some of his assistant coaches and family members boarded two LSU planes for the flight to Baton Rouge that landed at approximately 5 p.m. Sunday.

“After a lot of prayer and time spent with family, I made the difficult decision to accept the head coaching position at LSU,” Kiffin said in a prepared statement Sunday shortly after 2 p.m.

“I was hoping to complete an historic six-season run with this year’s team by leading Ole Miss through the playoffs,” Kiffin said. “While I am looking forward to a new start with a unique opportunity at LSU, I will forever cherish the incredible six years I spent at Ole Miss and will be rooting hard for the team to complete their mission and bring a championship to Oxford.”

A press conference at LSU has been scheduled for Monday to introduce Kiffin.

“We are thrilled to welcome coach Kiffin as the next head coach of the LSU Football program,” LSU athletc director Verge Ausberry said in a statement Sunday. “We shared, when we began this search, that LSU would secure the best coach in the country, and Lane Kiffin is just that. Lane is a proven winner who has thrived in an era of college athletics that requires coaches to adapt and innovate. His passion, creativity and authenticity make him the ideal leader to guide LSU into the future and consistently position us among the sport’s elite.”

Kiffin inherits a troubled team and roster that entered the 2025 season with high expectations and a No. 9 preseason ranking, but finished 7-5 and 3-5 in the SEC with a loss at No. 8 Oklahoma on Saturday.

“I want to welcome Lane and his family to Baton Rouge, and I’d like to thank our search committee, as well as our university and state leadership, for their critical support and counsel throughout this process,” Ausberry said.

Ausberry replaced LSU athletic director Scott Woodward, who fired Kelly. Woodward was then fired on Oct. 30, and Ausberry soon replaced him. When Woodward replaced Ed Orgeron as head coach after the 2021 season, he was not interested in Kiffin, who had just gone 10-2 that season in his second year at Ole Miss. It was the first 10-win regular season in Ole Miss history.

LSU SHOULD HAVE HIRED LANE KIFFIN AFTER 2021 SEASON

Instead, Woodward hired Kelly after Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley chose the USC job over LSU.

In the end Sunday, Kiffin gave up on his efforts to try to coach the Rebels in the College Football Playoff, while also being LSU’s coach, which is what delayed his and LSU’s announcement from happening on Saturday and stretching into Sunday.

Ole Miss defensive coordinator Pete Golding, a Hammond native, has replaced Kiffin as Ole Miss’ head coach. Golding will now coach the Rebels in the playoffs. No. 7 Ole Miss (11-1, 7-1 SEC) is expected to host a playoff game on Dec. 19 or 20.

Kiffin told Carter he wanted to put “guardrails in place to protect the program in any areas of concern,” Kiffin said in his statement concerning coaching Ole Miss in the playoffs and simultaneously recruiting and hiring a staff for LSU. This is something assistant coaches have often done in the past at several major programs.

Former LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini prepared the Tigers’ defense for the national championship game against Ohio State in the 2007 season after becoming Nebraska’s head coach following the regular season. In between practices and game planning with LSU, Pelini was on the phone recruiting and hiring assistants for Nebraska. He was also paid by both schools, and he was not the first in that situation. And LSU beat Ohio State for the national championship.

“My request to do so was denied by Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them, so they could maintain their high level of performance,” Kiffin said. “Unfortunately, that means Friday’s Egg Bowl was my last game coaching the Rebels.”

LSU is expected to pay Kiffin approximately $91 million in a seven-year contract at approximately $13 million a year, making him one of the highest paid college football coaches in the country. Two-time national champion Georgia head coach Kirby Smart makes $13.28 million a year. LSU also plans to put together an annual package of $20 to $25 million for talent procurement from the NCAA Transfer Portal and traditional recruiting via Name, Image & Likeness.

Kiffin, 50, is coming off a spectacular, historic regular season with the Rebels as he directed them to their first 11-win regular season in history. Ole Miss clinched its first College Football Playoff appearance on Friday with a 38-19 win at Mississippi State.

Kiffin turned down the Auburn job after the 2022 season. After a 5-5 overall record (4-5 SEC) in his first year at Ole Miss in the 2020 COVID season, Kiffin went 50-14 (.781 winning percentage) and 28-12 (.700) in the SEC over the last five seasons.

He is 116-53 overall as a college head coach – 55-19, 32-17 SEC at Ole Miss (2020-25), 26-13, 18-6 American Conference at Florida Atlantic (2017-19), 28-15, 17-12 Pac-12 at USC (2010-13) and 7-6, 4-4 SEC at Tennessee (2009).

Kiffin became the youngest head coach in modern NFL history at 31 in 2007 with the Oakland Raiders, but was fired early in the 2008 season at 5-15.

He twice won national championships as an assistant coach – as coach Nick Saban’s very successful and progressive offensive coordinator at Alabama in 2015 and as USC coach Pete Carroll’s wide receiver coach in 2003 and Carroll’s pass game coordinator in 2004.

A son of the late NFL defensive coordinator wizard Monte Kiffin, Kiffin was a Fresno State backup quarterback (1994-96) before beginning his coaching career as a student assistant at Fresno State in 1997 when he decided to not play any longer. He served as a graduate assistant at Colorado State in 1999 and as a defensive quality control assistant in 2000 with the Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL.

He got his first college assistant coaching job at USC under Carroll in 2001 as tight ends coach. He was the Trojans’ wide receivers coach in 2002 and ’03, then passing game coordinator in 2004 before the offensive coordinator position in 2005 and ’06.

After getting fired by USC as head coach during the 2013 season, Kiffin got a shot to rebuild his career when Saban made him his offensive coordinator in 2014 in a surprise move by Saban. And Kiffin drastically changed the Crimson Tide’s previous sometimes stodgy attack very quickly.

Kiffin will not be the first Kiffin to coach in Louisiana. His father Monte was the Saints’ defensive coordinator in 1995 for one season under coach Jim Mora. The elder Kiffin then moved on to Tampa Bay, where he became famous for the Tampa 2 defense from 1996-2008. The elder Kiffin passed away in 2024.

Kiffin will be the first coach in SEC history to coach at three current members of the SEC – Tennessee, Ole Miss and now LSU.

The hiring itself of the most sought-after college football head coach available is a victory for LSU, which underwent huge national, regional and local criticism after the firing of Kelly, then athletic director Scott Woodward over five days in late October and a nasty dispute over Kelly’s $54 million buyout that Kelly eventually won.

Louisiana governor Jeff Landry also inserted himself into the middle of everything, albeit briefly, but that made people question if Kiffin would want to walk into such a mess.

“Football coaches coach,” Ausberry told Tiger Rag shortly after replacing Woodward early this month. “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 (courting Kiffin) here either.” 

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