As I write this, it’s Tuesday afternoon and no one knows where Lane Kiffin is going to be coaching next year. Probably not even Kiffin himself, if the leaks from his circle are to be believed. This is Lane Kiffin we’re talking about, so really anything is on the table.
Setting aside the will-he-or-won’t-he aspect to the search right now, I do find it striking how many aspects of this search are reminding me of past UF searches. It may be some of the fact of “there is nothing new under the sun” from Ecclesiastes and also that, sadly, Florida has had so many coaching searches in the last quarter century that one is bound to find parallels somewhere.
I don’t find anything immediately that comes to mind for the search that brought Ron Zook. Steve Spurrier’s resignation came after the normal coaching cycle had ended, so UF had to scramble for someone after all the best candidates had made their decisions. I also don’t have any for the cycle after Urban Meyer’s second resignation, since the program was in such a different place at the time than it was in any of these other carousels.
Anyway, since I don’t have any news to report, here are the things I’ve found where history rhymes.
2004
I’ve said my piece elsewhere about how Urban Meyer was a one-of-one in terms of coaching searches. He was so obviously the top candidate that no one else that cycle came close. The fact that the runner-up for his services turned to the New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator is a kind of proof of it.
That said, it was clear from the jump that Florida was going to make him priority No. 1. That much was sure, and if Meyer had gone to Notre Dame, it would’ve meant a lot of egg on Jeremy Foley’s face.
The same thing is happening with Kiffin. It’s been no secret for a while that he’s so much Scott Stricklin’s top target that it’s difficult to say who’s No. 2. If UF can’t close the deal, it’ll be a real public humiliation just like it would’ve been had Meyer gone elsewhere.
But also like back then, UF has some real factors going in its favor. In 2004, it was former Utah president Bernie Machen. Meyer had worked under him and knew what he was going to get in terms of administrative support.
Now, it’s a number of things. Kiffin’s ex-wife, who he’s still actively social with in co-parenting their son Knox, is the daughter of the late Gator great John Reaves. Lane also grew up idolizing Spurrier, and now he has a chance to sit in Spurrier’s old chair and call the head ball coach a coworker. He loves Florida from his time at FAU, and he loves the water — which, Gainesville is closer to the beach than Oxford, Mississippi is. Plus, Kiffin’s greatest, and perhaps only at this point, gripe about Ole Miss is the fans not filling their small-by-SEC-standards stadium enough, whereas The Swamp is one of the greatest game day atmospheres in the country with fans that were still filling it for Napier as recently as September.
2014
This one is partly about visibility. Who doesn’t remember the spy shots of Foley in Jim McElwain’s front window? We’ve yet to see any images of Stricklin begging at Kiffin’s feet or anything, but the plane that brought Layla and Knox Kiffin to Baton Rouge on Monday after they visited Gainesville on Sunday is something.
Plus, UF is once again going after Ole Miss’s coach. The last time it happened was in this cycle when Foley targeted Hugh Freeze first. It was reported, and then disputed, that Foley offered the job to Freeze. The UF side denied it, which may have been true outright or may have only been true in the sense that no one is officially offered a college football head coaching job until they’ve already accepted it so the AD can say he got his “first choice”.
Freeze ultimately stayed at Ole Miss because he was from Mississippi and spent his whole career working in or very near the state. Florida didn’t exactly thrive under McElwain, but it probably dodged a bullet with Freeze.
2017
Often times the lazy take about who a school will target is the wrong one. For so many searches, the lazy take on Tennessee was that it would go get Jon Gruden because he’d started his career at UT as a grad assistant and met his wife while working there. Or, think of people this year speculating that Virginia Tech would go after Shane Beamer because of who his dad is.
Ever since Meyer left, the lazy take was that Florida would go after Dan Mullen. Mullen was the OC and QBs coach who worked with Tim Tebow and put big numbers up on the scoreboard. For two cycles, UF never considered him because, supposedly, Foley had decided that Mullen wasn’t made out for a big job like Florida’s.
Then Foley retired and Mullen’s former AD at Mississippi State took over. With the one thing blocking Mullen’s return out of the way, the return did come. And score one for Foley, since Mullen actually wasn’t up for the job. He kept the plane aloft with, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, the tailwind of McElwain’s recruiting, but he mentally lost his edge during 2020 and was done a year later when his own recruits and transfers weren’t talented enough to make up for his mental lapses.
People have been drawing lazy comparisons between Spurrier and Kiffin for ages, since both like passing offense and both are attention magnets in their own ways. Those ways are very different, though, and I still don’t like drawing that parallel. But because people have compared Kiffin to Spurrier, it’s been a lazy take for ages that Florida would go after the brash and mouthy guy who likes to play pitch and catch. Only in this search has it become real and not just a lazy take.
Regardless, in retrospect Mullen was probably always a mistake that Florida was going to make at some point. I could now say the same about Kiffin, only ideally he’s not a mistake like Mullen was.
2021
Famously, Stricklin fell in love with Billy Napier early in the process and never developed a real backup plan.
There has been so much time plus a search firm involved now that I don’t think Stricklin is likely to have done as shallow a search this time as last, but Kiffin absolutely appears to be the front runner for the job in the way Napier became last time around.
It’d be really nice if Kiffin takes the Florida job and wins for a decade so I don’t have yet another coaching search to put in the comparison pile so soon. Yet, while a lot of people are saying he’s almost certain to come to Gainesville at this point, he still could — to dig out yet another anecdote from the past — pull a Bob Stoops and have a literal last-minute change of heart and decide to stay at Ole Miss. It’s never over until it’s over, particularly when someone as mercurial as Kiffin is involved.