Opinion: Time is right for an SEC team to hop on the Lane Kiffin train

With the focus of the coaching world largely on the three open jobs in the Southeastern Conference, a huge question looms over the next handful of days: Is one of these schools getting ready to jump on the Lane Train?

Once reviled by SEC fans, fired by Nick Saban and frequently admonished by the late SEC commissioner Mike Slive, it feels increasingly as if Florida Atlantic coach Lane Kiffin could be destined to make his triumphant return after the Owls play in Saturday’s Conference USA championship game. And for those of us who enjoy Kiffin’s willingness to shake up the staid status quo, it can't happen a moment too soon.

After three years outside the spotlight, having to prove himself all over again, it’s time to bring Kiffin back to the big time. The only issue is whether any of these schools — Arkansas, most likely — will have the institutional fortitude to make a hire that is going to rock the boat in ways that are both thrilling and potentially embarrassing.

Because that’s exactly what you’re going to get with Kiffin — everything from the kind of national attention your program couldn’t buy to the can’t-miss plays that will inspire him to raise his arms before the ball is even thrown to the tweets that will draw fines from the conference. You get all of it with Kiffin. And at some point this year, the question has gone from whether he’s worth the gamble to whether a school in as dire straits as Arkansas can afford to pass him by. 

Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek, his deputy Jon Fagg and former Arkansas football player/Board of Trustees member Steve Cox all were in Boca Raton on Sunday to meet with Kiffin, according to two people with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

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After that, Arkansas continued conducting interviews with several more candidates on a list that includes Washington State’s Mike Leach and Tulane’s Willie Fritz, according to two other people with knowledge of Arkansas' search plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly speak.

But due to the urgency inherent in college football’s early recruiting period, Arkansas is expected to be ready to go by the weekend — and particularly if the choice is Kiffin, who wouldn’t be in position to accept the job until after the C-USA championship game against UAB. 

According to a person close to Kiffin, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk on his behalf, he’s intrigued by the possibilities at Arkansas and feels confident he could put together a top-notch staff.

Given what has happened at Arkansas the past few years, with the program on a 17-game SEC losing streak and getting beaten at home by the likes of San Jose State and Western Kentucky last season, there are few if any available coaches with the recruiting bona fides of Kiffin to turn over the roster quickly, get the attention of top prospects and infuse the program with SEC-level talent in a short period of time. 

At the same time, it wouldn’t be shocking if there were some reservations on the part of the Arkansas administration. As one athletics director put it, if you hire Kiffin and he implodes, you can’t say you never saw it coming. 

Because with Kiffin, you’re talking about a guy who has basically been a lightning rod for more than a decade and shown no desire to be anything else.

At Tennessee, his program’s aggressive recruiting tactics not only rankled his colleagues but also brushed up against the NCAA rulebook with impermissible phone calls and sending members of the recruiting hostess program out to visit high school players. (Kiffin wasn’t sanctioned individually by the NCAA.)

At USC, where he had some initial success, his program was fined $25,000 and reprimanded by the Pac-12 for deflating footballs before a game against Oregon — yes, the original “Deflategate.” Five games into his fourth season with the Trojans, he was famously fired on the tarmac heading home from Arizona State.

And then after three years of image rehab at Alabama, where he helped bring the Crimson Tide's offense into the modern era and did amazing work by winning an SEC title with Blake Sims at quarterback and a national championship with Jake Coker, Saban booted him a week before the national title game in 2017. Though neither have really discussed the specifics, it was clear Saban wasn't happy with Kiffin's focus as he tried to finish the season with Alabama while also trying to put together a staff at Florida Atlantic. 

At that particular time, Kiffin was still considered pretty untouchable by major programs. The only other real interview he had that year was with Houston — coincidentally, Arkansas’ Yurachek was the Cougars’ athletics director at the time — and lost out on that job to Major Applewhite. 

But time and success changes a lot of preconceived notions, particularly in a coaching market that isn’t exactly teeming with high-profile prospects. There are a lot of solid coaches out there that a program like Arkansas could hire from Fritz to Louisiana-Lafayette’s Billy Napier to Louisiana Tech’s Skip Holtz. But none of them are going to create the kind of buzz and have the upside of Kiffin, who could win his second C-USA title in three years this weekend. 

It’s fairly remarkable to think that Kiffin, even as long as he’s been around the college football zeitgeist, is only 44 years old and still not necessarily in the prime of his career.

Is it a risk for Arkansas to hand the keys to someone as unpredictable as Kiffin, who is prone to wandering off the reservation at times and tweeting a meme about blind refs after a game? Sure it is. But if you’re Arkansas and you haven’t been relevant at all for most of this decade, what do you really have to lose?