The year is 2025 and Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin is the king of college football coaching rumors, or perhaps all football coaching rumors for that matter. Several SEC jobs have him high on their leaderboards while he’s drawn some NFL interest as well. Should he stay or should he go? The indecision is bugging everyone.
Ultimately, Kiffin is hoping to lead a deep playoff run in Oxford this year through late January, and if he does just that, he very well could be out of the running for any college jobs, and even the NFL doesn’t love to wait around too long. However, Colin Cowherd wonders if the NFL is secretly where Kiffin would like to go next if he does make a move. When on with Josh Pate for the Colin Cowherd Podcast, he asked if the Ole Miss head coach is considering a professional move.
“I think several of them are,” Pate answered. “I think there are some names considering the NFL that would totally and completely put jaws on the ground if the names ever got public. I think these guys are always considering the NFL. Now, you’d never get the truth out of most of them. But yeah, I think he would consider it. I think they actively consider it all the time.”
The NFL is always a coaching destination thanks to the mere fact that it’s the highest possible level of football, but some guys, like a Nick Saban, still prefer the unique quirks of the college game.
Oakland Raiders head coach Lane Kiffin / Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images
“What I don’t know, and I think this is really what the decision comes down to, is… what do you personally value the most beyond football?” Pate asked aloud. “Like, some guys hate recruiting. They’re looking at the first exit door to get to the NFL. Others, they think it’s their wheelhouse. They think that’s one of their strongest suits. They actually love being around young people.”
You go from dealing with 18-22 year old kids, in much more of a teaching and developmental role, to basically running a fortune 500 company, in a certain sense. You go from teacher to business executive in terms of the level of athlete you are dealing with — adults vs. kids, essentially — which Josh Pate believes makes the experience totally different.
I will never forget when I was uh coming out of college down in Columbus, and I heard you talking about (Bill) Parcels one day and you described him as a meatball with arms,” Pate recalled. “That is what stuck with me. That is what NFL coaches look like relative to college coaches because you’re around adults all day instead of younger adults.”
That’s all to say: Lane Kiffin’s decision to leave college for the NFL may not be as simple as one level being higher up the ladder than the other. Rather, Kiffin may genuinely enjoy the age range and culture of coaching SEC college football vs. the more industrial NFL.
“So past that, yeah, I think he is considering it,” added Pate. It sounds like the college football world will be waiting on pins and needles to see where Kiffin winds up for 2026, and he’s a domino likely to kick-start a whole slew of changes across college football if he does make a move.
