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Lane Kiffin Is Not Going To Leave Ole Miss For Florida As Jimmy Sexton Prepares Huge Contract Extension

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Lane Kiffin Florida
iStockphoto / © Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

Lane Kiffin is the top name attached to the college football coaching job at Florida. He is not going to leave Ole Miss.

This is not the late 90s.

The modern era of college football puts a lot of these “less desirable” programs on an equal playing field. There is also the family element.

Florida wants Lane Kiffin.

Billy Napier was fired on Sunday after a 45-game tenure as head coach of the Florida Gators. He never won more than eight games in three full seasons and finished with a losing record in two of three.

A team that ranked as high as No. 15 in the preseason rankings (which mean nothing) barely escaped with a win over Mississippi State on Saturday to move one game closer to .500 at 3-4. Fans were not kind toward Napier as he left the field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for what proved to be the last time.

He was relieved of his duties less than 18 hours later. Napier will get paid $21 million not to coach.

That leaves Florida as one of the biggest open jobs in college football this season.

And as seems to be the case every single year since his initial arrival to Oxford in 2020, Lane Kiffin is the name to watch. The 50-year-old head coach of Ole Miss is the top name on the list in Gainesville.

According to John Talty, “Florida AD [Scott Stricklin] had been doing his due diligence on the Ole Miss coach this season and made calls to those around Kiffin.” Boosters and fans are frothing at the idea.

As they should!

The Gators need to make a home-run hire and Kiffin has won at every single stop of his career. The Rebels are currently ranked No. 8 in the country at 6-1.

Of course Florida wants to hire one of the winningest coaches in the country. Why wouldn’t it?

There is only one problem…

Ole Miss is working on a contract extension.

Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter said just last week that he is actively working with Kiffin and his agent on an extension. He is taking the same proactive approach as Indiana.

“Of course I’ve been talking with Jimmy (Sexton) and I’m going to be proactive with working out a deal with Lane and Jimmy,” Carter told the Ole Miss Spirit. “I’d love to get something done like Indiana did with Curt Cignetti before the silly season starts. We’ll see. I believe Lane’s happy here, but you never know what can happen with coaches. That’s why I’m being proactive in this process.”

The new deal will hover somewhere around 10 years, $120 million if I had to guess. We’ll see.

Jimmy Sexton walked with his client out of the tunnel at Sanford Stadium on Saturday.

In the meantime, Lane Kiffin is taking the same approach to these coaching rumors as he always does. He does not comment on outside opportunities during the season. This is not new. It’s what he does.

“I don’t comment on these other jobs or ongoing things in season,” Kiffin said after Napier’s ouster. “That’s awesome that he said those things, and I don’t take that for granted. Extremely appreciative of how everyone’s been here. Keith, the chancellor, everybody. So, (I’m) flattered that that would even be being discussed halfway through the season. But I don’t deal with that. We’ve got a lot to do, obviously, with another top-15 matchup and back-to-back road games. And, you guys have done this for years with me. So, I think it just speaks a lot to — that we’re mentioned (with) these other things a lot — to where our program’s come and our players and our coaches, and really take those things as compliment. So, they’re here again, I guess, and we have to stay focused and worry about this season.”

The focus is not on Florida or other jobs. It’s on the task at hand.

“We don’t really talk about it,” he continued. “I know that’s your guys’ job to bring up and all that. We don’t really talk about it. Like, if we’re around there you wouldn’t know any different of anything. We just stay in the work, stay in the moment, stay in the day. And really, that stuff has nothing to do with what we’re doing. … I think it’s a compliment to the amount of games we’ve been able to win here.”

That’s all you’re going to get. Now quit asking!

He’s not going anywhere.

There are quite a few reasons for Kiffin to stay at Ole Miss.

First and foremost, the Rebels are in a position to compete for a College Football Playoff National Championship. That might not have been true in the early 2000s or even just five years ago but it is now.

There is enough money in and around Oxford to fund a roster that can compete with the Georgias and Alabamas. We saw it in 2023 when Ole Miss went 11-2 with a New Year’s Six bowl win over mighty Penn State. We saw it last season when the Rebels beat the Bulldogs at home. Heck, we even saw it on Saturday when they almost went back-to-back against the team from Athens!

I’m not saying Florida isn’t also able to compete for a national title. I’m just saying the gap between these two jobs is not as big as it once was.

Furthermore, Lane Kiffin loves Oxford. He often talks about how it has changed his life. His daughter Landry is a junior at Ole Miss and helped to convince her dad not to leave for Auburn at the end of 2022.

Lane’s only son, Knox, led Oxford High School to a comeback win as the starting quarterback on Friday. He is a sophomore.

Lane’s ex-wife Layla also made the move from Manhattan Beach to Mississippi. So did his brother, who is also on staff at Ole Miss, and his nieces and nephews. There is a whole crew of Kiffins in Oxford.

And if you did not watch the E60 documentary, Lane Kiffin legitimately loves his current life. It’s not all about money— even though the additional pay bump is coming.

The Gators have question marks.

The University of Florida has hired and fired four different head coaches since 2011. None of them lasted more than four years.

Two of them, Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain, were named as the SEC Coach of the Year— only to be fired less than two years later.

The last coach who achieved sustained success with the Gators left the job on his own accord 16 years ago and checked himself into the hospital because he thought he was dying from stress.

Why would Lane Kiffin put himself in that position?

Yes, there is a slight advantage in terms of brand status at Florida compared to Ole Miss but the modern era of collegiate athletics created parity. However, Florida must recruit its own state against Florida State, Miami and even schools like USF and UCF.

Mississippi can be just as talented and far less crowded. Plus, none of that matters in the era of the transfer portal. Gone are the days of old.

I am not naive to the idea that the Gators might have a bigger booster base with more money but it’s not as extreme of a difference as you might think. Talty also suggested that Kiffin might want to live out his dream as the “next Steve Spurrier,” which I can totally see. Fine.

Florida is Florida. Ole Miss is just little Ole Miss.

I get it. I understand the perception but — if we’re being real — it would be a lateral move, at best.

Lane Kiffin is not going anywhere. Carter and Sexton are going to make sure of it.