Lane Kiffin kept the memento at his fingertips, and now it was in my hand.
This happened four-plus years ago. I sat opposite Kiffin, inside his office, holding a golf ball.
Not just any golf ball, but the golf ball.
You know the one. It’s the yellow golf ball some Tennessee fan chucked from the stands at Kiffin during the infamous deluge of debris at Neyland Stadium in 2021. Kiffin calmly picked up the golf ball that night amid the din, kept it, and months later, I was holding it inside his office at Mississippi.
It remains one of the more surreal interview moments I’ve experienced.
One thing I’ve learned from my many 1-on-1 interviews over the years with college football’s most fascinating and polarizing coach: Ask Kiffin boring questions, and you’ll get boring answers. If you can pique Kiffin's interest with a direct question that doesn’t bore him, that's when you get the good stuff.
So, amid my sit-down with Kiffin in the spring of 2022, I abruptly changed gears after a question about the transfer portal and asked: Where is the yellow golf ball?
Kiffin didn’t know I planned to ask this, but without skipping a beat, he swiftly opened his right-hand desk drawer, reached inside, and the next thing I know, a yellow Strata Super Range ball is rolling across his desk.
“Right there,” Kiffin said, as the ball rolled toward me. “There it is.”
“That’s not on purpose that it’s there,” he added, “not like I bring it out every day to look at it.”
If you believe the golf ball’s presence in Kiffin’s top desk drawer was mere coincidence, you probably also were among the suckers who thought Kiffin would retire from Ole Miss many years down the road, before cutting the ribbon at his statue unveiling, and retreating to a rocking chair on his veranda.
Lane Kiffin would relish being the one who got away from Ole Miss
I tell you this story about Kiffin keeping that golf ball stashed in his top desk drawer, because I believe this to be true: Kiffin loves little more than a good ol’-fashioned revenge game. A game where he gets to stick it to his professional “ex,” like he did that night against Tennessee. A game where he gets to be seen as the one who got away.
And, if any Rebels fan sneaks a sleeve of golf balls into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium for this LSU-Ole Miss battle of bitterness, it’s my belief they’d be giving Kiffin exactly what he wants. He’d cherish knowing he’s living rent-free in the minds of Mississippians, and he’d only love to have another token for his collection. A Top Flite X-Out chucked by some drunk Ole Miss frat bro would look good next to that Strata Super Range.
When I asked Kiffin about the hornet’s nest at Neyland Stadium in 2021, nearly a dozen years after he left Knoxville in literal flames, he compared the experience to being a gladiator in a coliseum.
“I really did enjoy it,” he said.
Especially, because Kiffin’s Rebels beat Tennessee, while Vols fans trashed their own field amid a meltdown.
Lane Kiffin tries to put pressure on Ole Miss
Kiffin plays mind games with anyone in his orbit. His latest? He’s trying to speak into existence that all the pressure in this weekend’s LSU-Ole Miss clash of top-10 teams rests on the Rebels’ shoulders.
Excuse me?
He’s the one who left, because he considered LSU the better job.
His Ole Miss heir, Pete Golding, already beat Kirby Smart this calendar year, took the Rebels to the playoff semifinals, then started this season by beating a ranked opponent.
So, it would seem like Golding’s playing with house money — but not in Kiffin's version of the story, which you might perhaps believe, if you first swallow stupid pills.
“Really, the pressure is on them,” Kiffin said. “(LSU) won seven games last year. They won 13. They returned two Heisman candidates. How often does that happen in the same backfield?”
Kiffin correctly added he's the magnet for vitriol in this game, more so than his players.
“I told the players today, ‘Man, you don’t have anything to worry about as far as attention on you all week. There’s going to be so much attention and hatred on me, you just get to go play,’” Kiffin said.
The players get to play, and Kiffin gets to coach — for one of the programs he lusted over all those years he spent in Oxford. Finally, he got another shot at an A-list job. He’s craved this opportunity since Southern Cal fired him in a soul-sucking moment for Kiffin.
I don't buy for a second Kiffin won't feel pressure when he's riding on a bus toward Vaught-Hemingway, where he'll be the most hated man within hundreds of miles. But, he's become a good enough coach, and assembled a talented enough team, that he might just be able to handle it.
Lane Kiffin would love his version of payback when LSU meets Ole Miss
Emotions will be marinated with bourbon and brought to a boil when Kiffin returns to the place he jilted, and Ole Miss fans won’t be the only ones with revenge on the brain.
Kiffin convinced himself Ole Miss wronged him when it refused to let him lead the Rebels in the playoff as LSU’s coach. In a moment of vanity meets four-dimensional thinking, Kiffin told himself (and told me) the Rebels would've reached the national championship game if he'd been allowed to coach in the playoff.
He wasn’t used to Ole Miss telling him no. Throughout his tenure, he got what he wanted. The Ole Miss administration consistently catered to their successful coach throughout most of his six seasons, but they weren’t going to bend over backward for LSU's coach.
Level-headed college athletics administrators would say Ole Miss’ stance — that Kiffin couldn’t lead the Rebels as LSU’s coach — was reasonable.
Even LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry told me before this season he couldn’t argue with Ole Miss telling Kiffin to hit the road after he took the LSU job.
But, it rankled Kiffin to not have his cake and eat it, too, even if he admitted months later his dogged insistence on coaching Ole Miss in the playoff after accepting LSU’s offer inflamed the situation.
“Looking back,” Kiffin told me in May, “it would’ve been a lot easier on me emotionally and a lot of people if I would’ve just sort of been like, ‘Hey, I’m leaving. I don’t want to coach the playoffs. I’m leaving, thanks for everything, it’s been a good run.’”
Exactly. That’s what he should’ve said then. But, he didn’t.
Feelings got hurt on all sides, and now each side will be in the mood for comeuppance.
Will Lane Kiffin own Ole Miss, like he does Tennessee?
Kiffin boasts an impressive track record in these “Hey, remember me?” games.
In his final season as Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator, Alabama ran up the score in a 52-6 rout of USC. Kiffin served payback on the program that fired him from his dream job. With the game out of hand in the fourth quarter, Alabama went for it on fourth down and scored a touchdown. Then, for good measure, Kiffin dialed up one last deep shot for a touchdown, with Alabama’s backup quarterback on the field.
Sweet vengeance.
Two years before that, Kiffin made his first return to Neyland Stadium as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. Before that game, Kiffin’s mom, Robin, told CBS Sports she was “scared to death” for her son’s safety being on the opposing sideline in front of 100,000 revved-up Vols fans. Years later, Kiffin claimed Alabama’s security team had suggested he ought to wear a bulletproof vest for that return into the Big Orange den.
He skipped the vest, and went straight to the fireworks. On Alabama's first offensive play of that 2014 game against the Vols, Amari Cooper scored on an 80-yard catch-and-run. Kiffin ran along the sideline toward the goal line as Cooper raced toward the end zone. Then, Lane just smiled.
He likely knew what else he had in store for Tennessee. The final score? Alabama 34, Vols 20.
And, when he returned to Knoxville again two years later? Alabama 49, Tennessee 10.
Then came Kiffin’s first return to Tennessee as a head coach.
Final score?
Ole Miss 31, Tennessee 26, plus a $250,000 fine for the Vols for trashing their own field — and one yellow souvenir for Kiffin.
Oh, how he’d cherish another.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Listen to his podcast, "College Football Unfiltered." Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lane Kiffin would love to stick it to Ole Miss. And take home a souvenir | Opinion
