Lane Kiffin had achieved something very special at Ole Miss, taking a non-blueblood SEC program to the College Football Playoff. It should have been a career and life highlight, finally standing in the playoff spotlight on his own. In previous trips to the playoff, Lane Kiffin was Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator at Alabama. In previous Bowl Championship Series games years earlier, Kiffin was an assistant to Pete Carroll at USC. Being a good head coach — his own boss, his own leader — took a very long time for Kiffin to achieve. He flopped in one year at Tennessee and then in a brief tenure at USC. Kiffin was, a decade and a half ago, a man who failed upward. Teams hired him despite a lack of proven results as a head coach. He went to the Nick Saban Rehabilitation Facility in Tuscaloosa and helped Saban win national titles, but his head coaching career had stalled. He needed to learn how to do the job, and that’s why his short stay at Florida Atlantic was so important for him and his career. He wasn’t coaching at a big-time school, surrounded by cameras and demanding fans. He didn’t have to play for the cameras. He was in a small conference whose football games were played in small stadiums largely removed from the public eye. He had to do the no-glory work of building a program, leading men, and tending to the details of a full operation.
