{"id":888668,"date":"2026-05-11T21:30:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T21:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/888668\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T21:30:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T21:30:19","slug":"lane-kiffin-cites-diversity-at-lsu-adult-money-in-his-decision-to-leave-mississippi-for-baton-rouge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/888668\/","title":{"rendered":"Lane Kiffin cites ‘diversity’ at LSU, ‘adult money’ in his decision to leave Mississippi for Baton Rouge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lane Kiffin shook up the SEC and college football landscape with his decision last fall to leave Mississippi<\/a> to take over as LSU\u2019s head football coach.<\/p>\n

He did so with Mississippi football at the peak of its powers, on the verge of playing in the College Football Playoff with a shot at the first national championship in program history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Now, months removed from the decision, Kiffin opened up to Vanity Fair<\/a> about what went into his call to leave a program that he\u2019d built into a power for a rival school \u2014 as well as the awkward timing of his decision.<\/p>\n

Some of his answers aren\u2019t surprising. Kiffin cited LSU\u2019s \u201cadult money\u201d and willingness to spend to build a winner that gives it an edge in the NIL era.<\/p>\n

As for that awkward timing, he fairly pointed to the college football calendar. Due to the timing of the transfer portal and recruiting calendar, LSU needed to have a head coach in place prior to the end of Mississippi\u2019s season. Thus, Kiffin\u2019s decision to leave Mississippi behind when it needed him most.<\/p>\n

\u2018My grandparents aren\u2019t letting me move to Oxford\u2019<\/p>\n

Kiffin also cited a factor that doesn\u2019t come up with almost every coach\u2019s decision to leave one job for another, more lucrative position: diversity. Kiffin told Vanity Fair that he ran into recruiting hurdles at Mississippi that he doesn\u2019t anticipate coming up at LSU.<\/p>\n

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From the Vanity Fair feature:<\/p>\n

When he was coaching there, Kiffin says, top recruits would tell him, \u201c\u2018Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren\u2019t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus\u2019 diversity feels so great: \u2018It feels like there\u2019s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that\u2019s the real world.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiffin didn\u2019t directly cite the inherent challenges to diversity that are engrained at Mississippi. Confederate flags used to be a mainstay in the stands at Mississippi football games until the school indirectly banned them in 1997<\/a> with a blanket ban on flagsticks.<\/p>\n

Until 2003, the school\u2019s mascot was Colonel Reb, a nod to the state\u2019s Civil War past. The school\u2019s nickname remains \u201cRebels.\u201d And it still goes by its \u201cOle Miss\u201d moniker, a nickname with ties to the state\u2019s heritage of slavery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These are certainly reasons enough for some athletes to take Mississippi off their list. In Baton Rouge, where more than half of the residential population is Black<\/a>, Kiffin doesn\u2019t anticipate lack of diversity being an issue on the recruiting trail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lane Kiffin shook up the SEC and college football landscape with his decision last fall to leave Mississippi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[331,332,7,22555,1564,978,1575,49,48,29597,2794,88567],"class_list":["post-888668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-college-football","tag-college-football-playoff","tag-football","tag-head-football-coach","tag-lane-kiffin","tag-lsu","tag-mississippi","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-oxford","tag-program-history","tag-vanity-fair"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116558077858239036","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}