Lane Kiffin leaves for LSU, says he wanted to finish year at Ole Miss

Lane Kiffin is leaving LSU. And he’s blaming his former boss for not letting him finish the job at Ole Miss.

“After a lot of prayer and time spent with family, I made the difficult decision to accept the head coaching position at LSU,” Kiffin said on social media.

“I was hoping to complete a historic six season run with this year’s team by leading Ole Miss through the playoffs, capitalizing on the team’s incredible success and their commitment to finish strong, and investing everything into a playoff run with guardrails in place to protect the program in any areas of concern. My request to do so was denied by [athletic director] Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance.

“Unfortunately, that means Friday’s Egg Bowl was my last game coaching the Rebels. While I am looking forward to a new start with a unique opportunity at LSU, I will forever cherish the incredible six years I spent at Ole Miss and will be rooting hard for the team to complete their mission and bring a championship to Oxford.”

Guardrails or not, Kiffin would have had ongoing access to Mississippi players at a time when he was under contract to coach LSU. With players having the ability to easily transfer, Mississippi didn’t want that.

Also, every win by the Rebels would have become an advertisement for LSU.

Kiffin is smart enough to know this. And he’s savvy enough to create the disingenuous impression that it would have been no problem to have him coaching one school after leaving to coach another, while also using his players as pawns in an effort to win the broader P.R. battle.

But Kiffin is just a symptom. The disease is the system the NCAA has created to allow stuff like this to happen. And the NCAA will never begin to become a credible organization if allows this to keep happening.

All NCAA schools should be prevented from contacting or pursuing head coaches from other NCAA schools until their seasons have ended. It’s not complicated. And it’s clearly necessary.

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