Maybe it's a good thing Lane Kiffin hasn't spent more than three full years in a position since leaving USC in 2006. Less time to get his ass beat.
Kiffin is putting the final touches on offseason preparations for his first season as Florida Atlantic head coach. It's his fourth head coaching job but first since the tarmac firing at USC four years ago. The 42-year-old regained some of his coaching stock after a highly successful three-year stint at Alabama, where he turned the Tide offense in a balanced, well-oiled machine.
Though Kiffin's age suggests this won't definitively be the end of the head coaching road if he fails, his past failures and dicey reputation speak louder volumes. And he knows it.
"If I don't make it here," Kiffin told Bleacher Report, days before FAU opens the season against Navy. "I guess I'm just a play-caller."
Part of that reputation includes a confrontational style that has led to sideline blow-ups, practice screaming matches and antagonistic tweets and comments.
MORE: Kiffin is "Pissed Off" People Think He Failed at USC
"By the end of our time together, I wanted to physically beat his ass," says a former Kiffin colleague. "And I wasn't the only one."
Bleacher Report's Matt Hayes also notes the highly critical coaches are also the same ones who use words like "genius" and "gifted." So while his failures and poor reputation carry heavier weight than his age or successful coordinator stints, his football IQ might have saved his ass. Literally.
You can read Hayes' full article here.
