We’re all overlooking a very critical piece of evidence in the lifelong struggle of right vs. might playing out this weekend in the bucolic bastion of Oxford, Mississippi.
Might not only has a better team, it has a pissed off coach.
And heaven help us all when Lane Kiffin feels he has been mistreated and misunderstood — and everyone else has been misled.
“A lot of this stuff has been misconstrued,” Kiffin said in July.
All he wanted to do was coach his team in the College Football Playoff.
All he wanted to do was take the coaches he hired at Ole Miss with him to LSU.
All he did was relay the thoughts of parents of recruits about Oxford.
All he did was try to sign a couple of players who were with him at Ole Miss, and had their football dreams dashed
by the NFL — and still had eligibility remaining.
He’s not the problem, the Ole Miss administration is at fault. What are they mad about? Kiffin made them relevant.
The SEC and the NCAA are at fault, too. They screwed up the eligibility clock, among many other issues in the NIL era, and Kiffin was simply following the rules.
The SEC presidents and chancellors are the problem. They’re going to kick LSU out of the league? For following a judge’s order?
If you don’t think Kiffin believes these narcissistic defenses to his very core, if you don’t think he’ll be more juiced than he has ever been as a coach when his new LSU team plays his former Ole Miss team in a cauldron of hate, marinate on his response to the criticism that he was race-baiting by saying parents of recruits told him there were concerns about Oxford's history.
“I said, 'A parent said,'" Kiffin told USA TODAY Sports in the spring, mere hours after the fire-starter had ignited yet another. “That's not me saying it as my opinion.”
An absolute masterclass of gaslighting.
Now the week of weeks has arrived, and Kiffin is stoking the fire again. The pressure is not on us, it’s on them. They have two Heisman Trophy candidates.
They’re the team that won 13 games last season, a play away from playing for it all. Meanwhile, LSU won only seven before Kiffin stepped foot in the Red Stick, and started cleaning up the mess he inherited.
See what he did there? You’re welcome, Ole Miss. I gave you a program built to win and last.
He’s playing this thing perfectly, a southern Stradivarius with a cajun twang.
You can point out any number of his obvious destructive behaviors. You can point to his lack of self control, and inability to read the room outside his tunnel vision.
What we’re all ignoring is Kiffin, in six years at Ole Miss, finally developed into an elite coach. You don’t win 33 games over the previous three seasons in the most competitive conference in college football — at a long-suffering program — without figuring it out.
He made a winner out of petulant talent Matt Corral. He took Jaxson Dart, who walked away from competition with Caleb Williams at USC, and made him a first-round draft pick.
He took Trinidad Chambliss, an NCAA Division II quarterback at Ferris State, and turned him into the most dangerous player in the Ess Eee See.
He saw the value in the transfer portal when every other coach whined and complained that it was unsustainable — then owned it. Built a damn brand around it: the Portal King.
Now all of a sudden, in the game of games this season ― in right vs. might ― you really think Kiffin is going wilt in the moment?
That LSU has the better team is one thing. That is has Kiffin, full of piss, vinegar and motivation, is an entirely different story.
Even if it is all in his head.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: LSU has better team, motivated coach when Lane Kiffin returns to Ole Miss | Opinion
