By: Kenneth Harrison

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

As the college football season progresses, more coaches will get fired.

For example, Brian Kelly was just fired at LSU. The #20 Tigers lost at home to #3 Texas A&M on Saturday, 49-25.

Kelly was 34-14 in his tenure at LSU, which was a little over three years. This is a prestigious position that is now available. We know that Penn State, UCLA, Arkansas and Florida are also looking for a new head coach.

A name that we keep hearing anytime a high-profile position opens up is Lane Kiffin.

As you know, he’s currently at Ole Miss. He just led the #8 Rebels to a road win over #13 Oklahoma, 34-26. They have moved up one spot in this week’s AP Poll.

He has been linked to the Florida job and he addressed his team about that before the game.

“I just mentioned it to them [Friday], Kiffin said. “That’s a product of having a program with a lot of players and coaches doing a really good job. I probably wouldn’t even have mentioned it, because they’ve been through this every year. Probably four years in a row, but we have so many new guys. I just told them, ‘Hey guys, that’s what happens around here because we win games and people like the style that we play in. ‘That’s all a compliment to the players.”

He’s now going to be mentioned for the LSU job but I want to know, is he actually a good fit for these positions?

Kiffin has a checkered past up to this point. He was a head coach for the Oakland Raiders from 2007-08 and he had a 5-15 record. He was fired after a 1-3 start during his second season.

He took over as the head coach at Tennessee in 2009 and went 7-6 in his lone season with the Vols.

Kiffin was an assistant coach at USC from 2002-06. He left Tennessee in January of 2010 for the USC job. Clearly this was a dream job for him at a blue-blood program. The Trojans had recent success during the 2000’s, winning national championships under Pete Carroll.

This should have been a great job for Kiffin but he underperformed. His overall record was 28-15 and he was fired five games into the 2013 season.

His best season was 2011 and his team finished 10-2. Going into the 2012 season the Trojans were ranked #1 in both polls. They finished 7-6.

He accepted the offensive coordinator job at Alabama on January 10, 2014. He held that position for the Crimson Tide from 2014-16.

He accepted the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic and was relieved of his duties as OC in January 2017. Alabama made the College Football Playoffs but they did not want him coaching after he accepted that position.

In three seasons at FAU Kiffin went 26-13. He had a losing record in his second season but he won at least ten games in his first and third season.

He’s been the head coach at Ole Miss since 2020 and his record is 51-19. Kiffin has three 10-win-or-more seasons with Ole Miss.

Kiffin has been around for a long time and he’s had varying degrees of success. I think he will leave Ole Miss for a better job but there are so many to choose from now. It will be interesting to see where he ends up.