Key Points:
- There are 12 college football head coaching openings.
- LSU fired Brian Kelly despite having a 34-14 record.
- Fox’s Joel Klatt predicts Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin will be the next head coach at LSU.
The college football space is seeing coaching turnover at an unheard-of rate this season.
Unlike last year’s coaching carousel, which saw just four coaches from the FBS ranks fired, we are already at 12 openings through 10 weeks. It’s worth noting that most teams across the country have anywhere from four to five regular-season games remaining, and there are a handful of coaches across the country who are on the hot seat.
Arguably, the biggest name to be shown the door this year was LSU head coach Brian Kelly. In what was his fourth year on the job, Kelly had compiled a 34-14 record with two 10-win seasons under his belt. However, the Tigers haven’t necessarily come close to returning to their 2019 championship form, and every day that passed with Kelly at the helm, seemed to be one day too many in the eyes of LSU fans.
Since Kelly was fired, the consensus in the sport is that LSU is the best job on the market, trumping roles at Florida and Penn State. While in past years there had been plenty of names thrown out for openings, the only name consistently linked to these massive jobs is Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin.
When appearing on “The Herd,” Fox college football analyst and former Colorado quarterback Joel Klatt was tasked with answering which job he thinks Kiffin should take between Florida and LSU. While it is certainly a fun hypothetical that many may find difficult to answer, Klatt made it clear that he thinks Kiffin will be the next coach in Baton Rouge.
“LSU is a step above,” Klatt said. “We know that LSU can go and put together rosters year in and year out that compete at the top end not only in the SEC, but also of the country and win a national championship. I think that LSU has top two or three resources financially in college football. They have deep, deep pockets. That’s why Dan Lanning loves Oregon. So I don’t think Dan Lanning will leave.
“If I had to bet,” Klatt said. “Lane Kiffin is your next coach at LSU.”
Lane Kiffin’s comments on being linked to other jobs, amid LSU speculation
While the noise around Kiffin leaving Ole Miss is dramatically louder this year than in years past, Kiffin has made it clear that he and his team have been through this exact same scenario multiple times and are focused on their own season. Something he discussed on the “Pat McAfee Show” recently, after deciding to address the rumors with his team.
“I usually don’t talk about it with the team, because we’ve dealt with this for a number of years, because our players have performed really well and won a lot of games here,” Kiffin said. “And so this attention has come with that. I just thought last week, it was important late in the week to address it on Friday, just because we have so many new players so they hadn’t been here, you know, the year or the year before that, where, you know, these, these job rumors and stuff would come up.
“And so I just told them, ‘Hey, this is a product of how you guys play.’ They see the way that you play so then people are like, ‘We want that system.’ And they say, ‘coach,’ but really it’s the system of the players and the assistant coaches and what a good job they do. So, I just told them, that’s a compliment to them.”
Only time will tell if Kiffin, who has had stints at Tennessee and USC, will want another shot at a blue-blood caliber program, but he seems to be saying all of the right things at this time.