Five Things We Learned From ‘Lane Being Lane,’ John Talty’s Fascinating Character Study of Lane Kiffin

The release of college football’s most anticipated book in years couldn’t have been timed better.

Lane Kiffin is the subject of an intriguing new biography from CBS Sports’s John Talty. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Lane Being Lane, John Talty’s definitive new biography of LSU coach Lane Kiffin, could begin with the same line as Emily Wilson’s rendering of The Odyssey: “Tell me about a complicated man.”

For 320 pages, the CBS Sports reporter wrestles with the as-of-yet unanswered question of who Kiffin actually is. Every side of college football’s most polarizing figure is thrust toward an unflinching light: Kiffin the genius, Kiffin the hedonist, Kiffin the boy wonder, Kiffin the man-child, Kiffin on sweet days of victory, Kiffin in dark nights of the soul. The result is a sometimes-funny-sometimes-sad sports biography unusually unencumbered by cliché—one that, due to the coach’s outsized public persona, has more in common with entertainment and music literature than 99% of college football writing.

Talty (along with journalism veteran Armen Keteyian) already painted a winning portrait of college football’s post-pandemic, pre-CFP expansion moment in The Price, and with Lane Being Lane, he can now claim to have churned out two of the better books about the sport written this century. Even in moments where the prose sags, the quality of the reportage shines. The trail of stories Kiffin seems to have left in his wake ensures it.

With the book review out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff. Here are five things we learned from Talty’s biography as Kiffin’s Tigers prepare to visit Ole Miss Saturday.

Moments of foresight at Alabama

In 2014, Kiffin became the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator a year after being unceremoniously fired by USC at Los Angeles International Airport. He helped Alabama shake off the heartbreak of the Kick Six the previous year and modernize its offense; the coach proved particularly useful during an overtime win over LSU, when he dialed up a gutsy trick play called “Oh S---.”

According to Talty, Kiffin also saw a blinking red warning light in the weeks leading up to the Crimson Tide’s eventual Sugar Bowl loss to Ohio State: “He thought the team, especially, his offensive players, was worn down and needed a break. ... Instead, Alabama was still practicing with full pads days before the game. Lane implored [coach Nick] Saban to ease up but the Alabama head coach wouldn’t hear it.”

That wasn’t the only time Kiffin’s vision seemed to be a hair ahead of Saban’s. Talty discusses an episode before the Crimson Tide’s 2016 opener against USC where Kiffin told then-Trojans offensive coordinator and longtime friend Tee Martin, “I really like my freshman quarterback.” The quarterback in question, then a backup, was Jalen Hurts.

Lane Kiffin had a contentious relationship with head coach Nick Saban during his time on staff at Alabama. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

A turbulent personal life

In the run-up to the book’s release, no quote made bigger headlines than Saban’s reported demand during Kiffin’s tenure that “you’ve got to keep Lane away from the girls that are in college. ... Make sure they’ve graduated college or are working a job.”

Kiffin’s mountain of personal dirty laundry is omnipresent throughout the book, and never more so than in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Kiffin “was facing intense pressure working for a man he couldn’t understand.” The naturally socially awkward coach is depicted retreating into alcohol and repeated dalliances with younger women, and Talty does well to sketch Kiffin in these passages as a lost soul rather than either a rock star or unrepentant womanizer. Still, his actions seem to have had serious consequences: “Multiple Alabama sources insisted that Lane’s behavior during his time in Tuscaloosa precluded him from ever succeeding Nick Saban and becoming the Crimson Tide’s head coach.”

An illuminating, maybe-self-aware-maybe-not quote on that front comes late in the book, when an annoyed friend in Oxford, Miss., confronts Kiffin about his rumored propensity for dating younger women.

“When they are young like that, they haven’t gotten bitter against men yet, Lane claimed as his reasoning,” Talty writes.

All kinds of roads not taken

The number of alternate paths for Kiffin that Talty hints at are staggering, especially from his Alabama stint onward; as early as 2015, Talty writes that Kiffin began badgering agent Jimmy Sexton about a return to the head coaching ranks. He eventually put in three years with Florida Atlantic before his six-year stay with the Rebels, leaving Ole Miss last year for LSU.

Jobs he reportedly circled in the interim: Arkansas after the 2019 season (“Lane, according to multiple sources, strongly implied he would accept it” before committing to Ole Miss). Miami after the ’21 season. Auburn in ’22, a story that broke contain and forced Kiffin into a public commitment to the Rebels. The Crimson Tide after the ’23 season, a job Kiffin reportedly wanted so badly he appealed directly to ESPN’s Paul Finebaum to help him get it. Florida State after the ’23 season as well, contingent on Alabama hiring Mike Norvell, whom the Crimson Tide spurned in favor of Washington’s Kalen DeBoer.

And, of course, Florida a year ago—a development so appealing to Kiffin that Talty writes he asked defensive coordinator Pete Golding on the field after beating Oklahoma whether he was “ready to go to Gainesville.”

Lane Kiffin considered the Florida job along with LSU and remaining at Ole Miss last season. | USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect

About that Kentucky loss in 2024 ...

No. 6 Ole Miss’s left-field 20–17 upset loss to a bad Wildcats team in Sept. ’24 took college football by surprise, and probably cost the Rebels a berth in the first 12-team CFP field. Talty, however, writes that the loss was more than a college football upset—it was a domestic drama come to life.

“[Kiffin] had broken up with his on-again, off-again girlfriend of more than two years earlier in the week,” Talty writes. “While he should’ve been thinking about how to beat Kentucky, all he could think about was about his failed relationship. As the breakup played out, he even sent screenshots of their communication to his coaching staff group chat.”

There it is: Kiffin’s personal life appearing to directly impact an on-field result. Amid a string of triumphs with Ole Miss, no moment in the entire book better underlines his radioactivity.

A losing final battle with the Rebels

Anyone with an even passing interest in college football knows how badly Kiffin wanted to coach Ole Miss in last year’s CFP, appearing from a distance to marshal ESPN to his defense (this is one of the few topics the book should’ve covered more, although it does well to hit on the network’s hagiographic-in-hindsight E:60 documentary The Many Lives of Lane Kiffin).

Where Lane Being Lane is additive is in its behind-the-scenes look at Kiffin’s fateful last meeting with Rebels athletic director Keith Carter. The plan, per Talty, was for Kiffin to ask Carter to coach Ole Miss in the CFP and graciously depart when he said no. Instead, Kiffin reportedly stretched the meeting from its intended minutes to over two hours, begging Carter to stay on and helping turn a curt exit into an acrimonious one. One Rebels source called it a “temper tantrum;” another called it unforgivable.

Anyway you slice it, the episode was a black mark for Kiffin—the story of his life, but as Talty illustrates, not his life’s only story.

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