New athletic director Verge Ausberry admitted with a smile that he didn’t feel LSU’s month-long pursuit of Lane Kiffin as its next football coach was “a done deal” until their plane back to Baton Rouge was taking off Sunday afternoon.
Kiffin’s anxieties from an “excruciating and difficult” decision to leave Ole Miss and the chaotic resulting departure weekend lingered through the flight.
But the Tigers ultimately landed their clear target for the job, and their new coach said the uneasiness weighing on him to move on from a Rebels program he’s led to historic success subsided as he touched down in Baton Rouge and saw his new home.
“I saw the leadership and I felt the power of this place, then we get in the car, and as we’re driving out and there’s the fans just all of them out there at the airport, and their excitement and their passion,” he recounted. “Then the cars drive by as we’re going to the office, and you go by Tiger Stadium, and it’s lit up, and you are, like, ‘I absolutely made the right decision,’ and it all went away.”
Other SEC programs had tried to pry Kiffin from Oxford, Miss., throughout his six-season tenure, including LSU not being alone in that effort during the past month.
The son of legendary NFL defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin led the Rebels to a 55-19 record since 2020 — the sixth-most in that span among programs in Power-Four conferences — including this season marking the first 11-win regular season in program history and the first stretch of four 10-win seasons in a five-year span.
“We had a list put together and said who are the top guys out there, who we could get, who made sense to us,” said Ausberry, the former player and longtime university staffer who was elevated to his position Oct. 30. “And Lane’s name kept popping up, Lane’s name kept popping up, and we said, ‘You know what, let’s take a shot at him and make some connections, and I want to get to know him a little bit.
“So I contacted guys like (former Tigers) Booger McFarland, Ryan Clark, Marcus Spears — you know, Booger played for his father, so he watched Lane grow up with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — and get a better feel. And obviously I talked to a lot of coaches, a lot of former coaches, a lot of former who worked here (such as Nick Saban) as you know and got a better feel about who the guy is, do we want him at LSU, is he the right fit at LSU? And that’s the thing: The fit at LSU.”
Kiffin leaned on some of the same people, such as Saban and former USC and Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, as he weighed the decision.
Carroll told him his father, who passed away last summer, “would tell you: ‘Boy, go get it! Go for it!'”
The younger Kiffin joked that Saban had also coached elsewhere in the conference, at Alabama, so he couldn’t share the former Tigers and Crimson Tide coach’s sentiments.
“But I’ll say I think the world of coach Saban, and I respect him,” he said. “So there’s a reason I’m here.”
Kiffin said LSU was ultimately the only other opportunity in college football for which he was willing to leave Ole Miss.
He pointed to the support and resources of a talent-rich recruiting base, a passionate fan base and a university and state with an aligned prioritization of the Tigers’ pursuit of championships and to his family being “all in” after visiting Baton Rouge and Gainesville, Fla.
“When you’re in those difficult decisions and you’re torn, very torn, back and forth, back and forth, and there’s multiple options — there were really four different places that we had to think about in this,” he said. “I just talked to (mentors), and it really was apparent to I felt like everybody that I talked to outside of the state that I was in all basically said the same thing.
“They all said, ‘Man, you are going to regret it if you don’t take the shot and you don’t go to LSU. It’s the best job in America with the best resources to win it. It’s obviously been done here before by a number of people.'”
Three of LSU’s four coaches this century — Saban, Les Miles and Ed Orgeron — have led the program to national titles.
Brian Kelly, whose Oct. 26 dismissal kicked off the pursuit of Kiffin, posted a 34-14 record, but did not appear amid a disappointing fourth season to be trending that direction.
“We told Lane that LSU was not just a place to come to win games — he has done that already,” Ausberry said. “We told him it was a place to come to contend for national championships year in and year out. We promised him the resources to recruit and develop the best players in the country. We promised him a student body and a fan base that demands success, and we promised him a state and a community that will welcome him and his family and that was eager to become, with his leadership, legendary.
“If those sound like big promises, then you don’t know how much I love and believe in LSU and Louisiana. We asked him to believe too. He showed us he was all in.”
All in enough that Kiffin insisted Monday he was still unaware of the specifics of his new salary — obtained by The Advocate as $91 million over seven years — and that he had insisted to agent Jimmy Sexton to not tell him in order to ensure finances did not dictate his decision.
LSU had long intrigued Kiffin as a program capable of not only winning a national championship, but of establishing a consistent contender to do so.
Having been a visitor to Tiger Stadium as both an analyst at Alabama and head coach at Ole Miss, he said he’s excited to now have the opportunity to work from the other sideline — and rather than the weight or intensity he’s faced as an opponent, harness the advantages provided to home team.
“You are reminded you are at the elite program in all of college football, the same that those two coaches just told me and reminded me,” Kiffin said. “Actually we were going by Tiger Stadium, and I called one person. I called Ed Orgeron, and I said, ‘Hey man, all I can do is, man, this place just makes me want to talk like you right now.’ I did.
“We were in the car, and the kids and the coaches were in there, and they’re like, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m channeling Ed right now. I’m feeling him.’ I rolled down the window, and I was like, ‘Geaux Tigers!’ to the fans. I called Ed and said, ‘I don’t know, man, I’m feeling you right now. He’s like, ‘Coach, you’re at the best place in America.’ I feel that.”