Mississippi head coach Lane Kiffin reacts to a official’s call during the second half of an NCAA college football game against Mississippi State, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Starkville, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) AP

Don’t blame Lane Kiffin.

By leaving Ole Miss, on the eve of the college football playoff, to go to LSU, Kiffin has again made himself a lightning rod for controversy.

But Kiffin is simply embodying college football’s poorly kept secret:

The goal of big-time college sports is not about winning championships. It’s about money. In almost every case, conferences, administrators, schools, coaches and players would rather have a check than a trophy.

If it were about titles, Texas and Oklahoma would have stayed in the Big 12, and USC and Oregon would have stayed in the Pac-12, which would still exist.

The path to making the playoff and, by extension, winning a championship was much easier for all four of those schools when the Big 12 and Pac-12 were robust entities.

It was better for their fans and for all fans. There were more great games and great rivalries.

Conferences expanded for TV money, not to improve their championship potential. While the overstuffed leagues create a few new fun matchups per year, they’ve also created countless games nobody cares about. Stanford and Pitt are conference rivals. So are UCLA and Minnesota. The travel is bad and worse for every sport other than football. The UCLA women’s soccer team played conference games in Madison, Minneapolis, West Lafayette, and St. Louis (Big Ten Tournament).

It’s not about championships for the college football players either. Winning a title is at best third and for good reasons. For the best players, developing for the NFL should be No. 1 and NIL money should be No. 2.

Unlike Kiffin, who went from making a lot of money at Ole Miss to a boatload of money at LSU, NIL can be life-changing. There are obviously some players whose families don’t need money. But for many others, their earning power is greater over their time in college than it will ever be when their careers are over. Chasing every nickel is a sound financial decision for them, for their parents and for their children.

Kiffin makes for a convenient bad guy. He has always embodied the arrogant, sleazy snake oil dealer that people hate in college sports. And unlike many of his disingenuous colleagues who try to come off as genial, he hasn’t tried to fake it. He’s cocky and confrontational and has left behind burned bridges at most of his previous addresses.

Kiffin didn’t like it when an Ole Miss podcaster said “you can’t turn a hoe into a housewife,” in reference to the coach’s legendary wandering eyes.

But generally, Kiffin has been plenty happy to play the villain. And while that’s how so many around the sport will portray him going forward, he’s not at fault here. His move lacks honor, but if Ole Miss wanted someone with honor, they would have hired somebody else.

Rick Pitino, who has not been a “housewife” personally or professionally over the course of his career, blamed college football’s calendar for the problem.

“I’m not knocking football, but there’s something wrong with their calendar,” Pitino tweeted. “I’m at SJU and we are potentially a one seed and can win a National Championship this year, and I leave in March??? What’s going on here?”

Pitino isn’t wrong.

The recruiting calendar is still tied to the academic calendar even though college football becomes less and less tied to college every year.

Kiffin wanted to stay and coach the postseason. Ole Miss deserves some credit for holding the line and telling Kiffin to hit the bricks. By doing so, they’re setting the initial example. A playoff-bound coach will have to at least wonder if the greener grass is worth abandoning his team for.

In a well-run sport, the high-profile nature of Kiffin’s move would cause leadership to reconsider the calendar and the chaotic nature of the hiring process. But this isn’t a well-run sport. This is college football. And more likely this only emboldens the next coach who wants to “pull a Kiffin” and do the same thing.

The reason the sport took so long to get a playoff was money. The reason they want to keep expanding the number of teams in that playoff is money.

Kiffin’s decision shouldn’t make him the scourge of college football but the face of it.