Peach Bowl: Who is Lane Kiffin? Fast Facts About Ole Miss Coach

Penn State Football is slated to clash with Ole Miss on December 30th in the 2023 Peach Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia. Kickoff is set for noon Eastern.

If you were curious about the person steering the ship for the Ole Miss Football team, then you came to the right place. Because let’s face it, if I said the name “Lane Kiffin” to virtually any college football fan, they would immediately start spouting off “Joey Freshwater” jokes and sending gif’s of Nick Saban tearing him a new one on the sideline.

So in this article, let’s take a look at three facts you may not have known about Lane Kiffin. But before we do that, here are a list of facts about Coach Kiffin that most people already know about: -Youngest NFL Head Coach in the modern era (2007 Oakland Raiders – 31 years old)-Lane was fired from Oakland the following year-Youngest active FBS head coach (2009 Tennessee Volunteers – 33 years old)-Kiffin then left the following year to be the head coach at USC-Lane was then fired three and a half years later at 3:14am on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport-Following his release from USC, Nick Saban brought him to Alabama as their Offensive Coordinator/QB Coach from 2014-2016-Lane Kiffin was hired by Florida Atlantic in 2017 to be their head coach-After three seasons at FAU, Kiffin then took over as the head man at Ole Miss until the present day

Lane Kiffin’s winning percentage against ranked teams during his college coaching career isn’t great

So, obviously, I’ve given it away based on the above subsection title, but if I were to ask you how many wins a Lane Kiffin-coached football team would have against a ranked opponent in 32 total games, I guess that you would say something in the neighborhood of more than 10.

Something around the likes of 16-16 or maybe 15-17 would sound like a reasonable number considering both the places Kiffin has coached at as well as the hype surrounding him as a head coach.

But, I’ll let Assistant Principal Ed Rooney let you know how many times Kiffin has beaten a ranked team: “Nine times.”

With those nine wins, Kiffin holds just a 28% winning percentage against ranked teams. And it’s not shocking that his win percentage against top 10 teams is also pretty bad.

Lane Kiffin has been the head coach facing off against a top-10-ranked team 18 times. And his teams own a combined 3-15 record against these squads. His first win came against No. 4 Oregon back in 2011, and his next two wins were against the football powerhouses of No. 7 Indiana (2020) and No. 7 Kentucky (2022).

For those of you scoring at home, that’s a 17% winning percentage against top-10 ranked teams. Penn State aims to be the 16th top-10 team to beat Kiffin, when the Nittany Lions square off against the Rebels in the Peach Bowl.

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Kiffin’s multiple mishaps while at Alabama

Following Alabama’s 45-40 win in the 2015 National Championship game, Lane was left behind by the team bus as they pulled away from the University of Phoenix Stadium. Kiffin was talking to reporters when this happened, and even though he tried to get officials to stop the buses and have them turn around, they kept on going. Then on April 2, 2016, Alabama was set to have a team scrimmage at promptly 1pm at Bryant-Denny Stadium. However Lane Kiffin must have forgot his keys that day because this happened:

You can’t tell, but this is Lane Kiffin jogging around Bryant-Denny trying to find a way in. Team scrimmages at 1. pic.twitter.com/FMbaYGFy8z

— Aaron Suttles (@AaronSuttles) April 2, 2016

So, aside from constantly being berated on the sidelines by Nick Saban, Lane Kiffin had been left behind by the team buses and locked out of his own stadium in the span of four months.

What could possibly go wrong next? Well, if you said “got left behind by the team buses again”, then you would be correct! And this time it happened on December 29, 2016, following a media session for Alabama’s upcoming College Football Playoff semifinal game at the Chick-fi-A Peach Bowl. Between all of this and his firing on the tarmac while at USC, I think it’s safe to say that public transportation and Lane Kiffin don’t mix too well.

How Lane Kiffin got into coaching was about as “Lane Kiffin” as it gets

So, most everyone also knows that Lane Kiffin has a very well-known and respected NFL coach as a father. Monte Kiffin worked for numerous NFL franchises between 1983-2016.

And, it would make perfect sense that Monte would get Lane’s foot in the door for whichever college or NFL team he wanted. But this of course wouldn’t even start until Lane finished his playing career at Fresno State. Or would it? In 1997, Lane was a fifth-year senior quarterback and he had been a backup his entire career. Kiffin had patiently waited for his turn to finally get the nod as the starter.

But the only problem for him was that both David Carr and Billy Volek were also on the team. So, one day at practice, Lane Kiffin came trotting out in shorts and a t-shirt even though it was a full pads practice. Offensive Coordinator at the time, Jeff Tedford, asked Lane what he was doing. Lane’s response was, “Well, I figured I could come out here in shorts and a t-shirt because you’re just gonna give all my reps to Dave.”

Tedford yelled for Lane to get off the field and Lane obliged. But he didn’t run into the locker room to change, he ran off the field and exited the premises. At that point, everyone thought he had completely quit.

However, this wasn’t exactly the case. Thirty minutes later, Lane Kiffin emerged onto the field again with his shorts and t-shirt, but he did bring his helmet this time.

And that wasn’t the only thing that was new.

Lane Kiffin was also the brand, spanking new wide receivers assistant coach for Fresno State. I told you it was a very “Lane Kiffin” thing.

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Chris Snyder

Penn State Wrestling Beat Reporter at NittanyCentral

Expertise: College Wrestling, College Football, Lays Chips
Education: Penn State University
Location: State College, PA

Even though he had no prior journalism experience, Chris has now covered Penn State Wrestling and Penn State Football for the past three years, including as the Penn State Wrestling Beat Writer for VictoryBellRings.com, part of the FanSided network.

And it's clear he also likes constant torture as he's been a PSU Basketball fan for way too long.

Several years back, Chris made the seamless transition from PGA Professional to computer programmer and thoroughly enjoys following and writing about all things related to Penn State sports during his spare time.