Lane Kiffin would have probably won at Auburn. Auburn dodged a bullet by not hiring him.
Even as I typed the first sentence of this column, I can already hear Auburn fans complaining.
“You are just defending your boy!”
“Why don’t you and Hugh go play another round of golf!”
“Your boy is a loser.”
That last one was the popular one for people to send me via text or tell me in person while Hugh Freeze, who I have been friends with for almost a decade, struggled to get Auburn back to its winning ways, ultimately getting fired this past November after too many losses and not enough answers.
I understand. I get it. His record on the Plains speaks for itself. As an Auburn alum and fan, I wasn’t quite happy with how the Tigers were performing on the field either. If I didn’t have a personal friendship with Freeze, I probably would have been yelling the same things. I might have said some in my mind during those three seasons.
Lane Kiffin would have burnt his bridges to Auburn just as quickly
But I do have to say this. No matter how many wins he brought and no matter how many rivalry games he won, I’m happy that Auburn didn’t hire Lane Kiffin. Would the Tigers’ program have been in better shape right now? Almost without a doubt.
But Auburn would be sitting in the same situation that Ole Miss is right now: with a hypocritical former head coach taking unwarranted shots at everything the university stands for.
You think you dislike Kiffin now? There’s no way you wouldn’t have disliked him even more had he pulled what he did to the Rebels with his selfish move to take on a new job at a rival school at Auburn. He’s a punk, someone who has never grown up, and someone who thinks burning bridges is the right way to leave a job.
Surely he wouldn’t have gone after Alabama’s racist past like he did Mississippi’s, right? Of course, he would. Certainly, he wouldn’t take every chance to go out of his way to make every snide comment about the Plains, the city of Auburn and everything else that Auburn fans hold dear, right? Please.
Kiffin might have won had he been hired to follow Bryan Harsin. In fact, he might have won big with the Tigers. There’s no doubting his coaching ability. It would have been nice for Auburn to rise up in the polls, make the College Football Playoff and see a resurgence in the program. Everyone is cheering for that. But with a weasel like Kiffin, it comes at a cost, and Ole Miss is finding that out in the worst way possible.
I'm just happy it isn't Auburn.
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