Lane Kiffin Recalls ‘Mentor’ Pete Carroll’s Fatherly Advice on Picking LSU Over Ole Miss

After weeks of speculation and rumors, the man who had been in charge of the Ole Miss Rebels for the past six seasons, Lane Kiffin, has finally announced that he is taking his talents down to the bayous of Louisiana to become the new head coach of the LSU Tigers. Kiffin made the announcement himself via a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, and it’s being reported that his contract with the Tigers will be good for roughly $12 to $13 million per year for the next seven years.

It’s enough to ensure that Kiffin will be one of, if not the, highest paid coaches in the history of college football. According to the man himself, however, it wasn’t the dollar amount that lured him to Baton Rouge, but rather the advice of his mentor and Super Bowl-winning head coach, Pete Carroll.

During his exclusive interview with ESPN’s Marty Smith, “I talked to some mentors, Coach Carroll and Coach Saban. Coach Carroll said, ‘You’re dad would tell you to go, man. Take the shot. You’ve accomplished a lot here.'”

Kiffin will leave the Rebels with an 11-1 record and a viable path to the national championship, but they’ll have to make it there on their own. The program’s athletic director, Keith Carter, denied Kiffin’s request to finish out the season as the head coach of Ole Miss, and has instead decided to immediately install Pete Golding, their former defensive coordinator, as the next head coach of the Rebels.

Throw in the fact that LSU was bad enough to justify firing their own head coach, Chip Kelly, halfway through the season, and it’s been hard for many to understand what exactly it is, apart from money, that Kiffin could possibly see in this program. In the eyes of the 50-year-old play caller, however, this was a “family decision” rather than a football one.

“It’s just something that I prayed on,” Kiffin informed Smith. “Maybe it’s right, maybe it’s wrong, but I think, a lot of the time, you just go prove things right. And that’s what we’re going to do when we get there.”

By the time you’ve read this, Kiffin’s plane will have already touched down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He’ll have presumably dove right into meetings and recruitment planning, but it’s going to take a lot of work to make the nation forget about this one.

This entire debacle has already managed to take the spotlight off of the failure’s of Kelly and this 2025 LSU roster, so at least in that sense, Kiffin’s hiring has already been a success for the program. While only time can tell as to whether or not he will actually return to the Tigers to their former glory, he’s got them back to where they want to be, in the national spotlight, and that’ll likely keep them content for now.