Albert Pujols joins 700-HR club: The best stories from those who played with and against him
Twenty-two years. Seven hundred home runs.
Albert Pujols achieved a level of greatness only three other players in the history of the game have matched when he hit No. 700 on Friday night — his second homer of the evening at Dodger Stadium. He joins Barry Bonds, Henry Aaron and Babe Ruth as the only players in the exclusive 700-home run club.
As the St. Louis Cardinals slugger made his march for history, ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, Buster Olney and Alden Gonzalez asked current and former teammates, opposing pitchers and other greats in the game to describe their favorite moments and what it has been like playing with, pitching to and simply witnessing an all-time great home run hitter during Pujols’ two decades in the majors.
The home runs we just can’t forget
Mike Trout: ‘This is for 600. This is gonna be sick right here’
“The grand slam, when he hit 600. Just the situation. I mean, it was a big spot in the game, and everyone was thinking the same thing. ‘This is for 600. This is gonna be sick right here.’ And then he hit it. He loves the moment. And that’s the thing — people kept asking me, ‘Hey, do you think he’s going to get it [700]?’ For sure. The way Albert prepares himself — he doesn’t change his approach, doesn’t try to hit a homer. He’s just trying to put a good swing on the ball. That’s big.”
Manny Machado: Game 3 of the 2011 World Series? ‘You could even throw the rosin bag and he was probably going to hit it out’
“That was just incredible. I mean, he was not missing. You could throw him whatever and he was going to hit it. You could even throw the rosin bag and he was probably going to hit it out. Just that sweet swing. Even all his homers, going back — his first home run. I just admire that swing, how smooth it is, how long it stays in the path. It’s impressive.”
Tony La Russa: ‘That gave us life’
“In 2006, we had a big lead and everyone got hurt, so it came down to September and we were struggling to get into the playoffs. San Diego came into town and it was a Wednesday night, we had lost the first two games of the series, down a run in the eighth inning, the Padres brought in a real good sinkerball pitcher [Cla Meredith], and he hit a three-run homer and won the game. That gave us life.
“His true claim to fame is he is a high-average hitter who has extra-base power. He plays the scoreboard. With a runner on second, he’s trying to hit a line-drive single and then he may get all of it for a two-run homer. He’ll go foul line to foul line and he hits all different pitches. When he gets that underspin with his swing, he gets that carry.”
Paul Goldschmidt: ‘If you wrote it up perfectly, this is what you would write’
“There’s been three or four home runs I’ve been absolutely amazed at. The [Drew] Smyly one at his eyes was impressive. The one in Pittsburgh. That one passed A-Rod (on the all-time home runs list) and was a game winner. There was another game winner when it was 0-0 and he homered. And then the ones against the Padres. A two-homer game … kind of like storybook. That’s what I’ll remember. If you wrote it up perfectly, this is what you would write: Albert with the game on the line — and he actually comes through. Amazing.”
The secret to hitting 700 home runs
Nolan Arenado: ‘He doesn’t think about hitting home runs’
“I’m probably going to say something people don’t like, but he doesn’t think about hitting home runs. That’s what he tells me, and I believe him. With the way he swings, the way he works, talking to him, he says he never thinks about it. And he’s not going to change what’s worked for him. It’s about getting on top of the baseball, backspinning the baseball, and wherever it goes, it goes. He talks the talk and walks the walk with saying those things. And I really believe him.”
Mark McGwire: It’s all in the hands
“I’m a true believer in the bottom hands being the key to swinging the bat. You watch Albert. He never lets go of that bottom hand until he has to run. To me, that’s the driving force in his swing and why he’s one of the best ever.”
Chris Carpenter: The Machine calls his own shots
“There were multiple times he would go up there for his first at-bat and come back and tell us he was going to hit a homer the next time up. I couldn’t tell you how many times that happened and he would do it. It happened a lot because he understood after one time how they were going to attack him. He was amazing to watch play.”
Matt Holliday: And he’s earned the right to admire his home runs
“When you hit 700 home runs, you know when it’s going out and when it’s not. The guy that bothers me is the guy who [has three career home runs] and it hits the wall and he gets a single. That guy needs to run. But when you hit 700, you know what it feels like. If anyone can give advice on when a ball is going to go over the wall or not, he’s right at the top of the list.”
Mike Matheny: ‘He walked up … like his family wasn’t going to eat unless he made a pitcher pay’
“You run out of ways to describe how unique, different and special he is. He’s relentless. I’ve never seen a hitter who would not, could not give away an at-bat. It didn’t matter if he had four [hits] that night, he walked up to that fifth one like his family wasn’t going to eat unless he made a pitcher pay. The intensity he was able to maintain from Day 1 of spring training until he got sent home at the end … the consistency sticks out.”
Jim Edmonds: ‘If Albert doesn’t get hurt, we’re talking 800 or 850’
“If Albert doesn’t get hurt and plays three-quarters in Anaheim of how he played here, we’re talking about 800 or 850 [home runs]. When he first got back here, your brain is telling you what everyone is telling you: ‘You can’t hit righties anymore and you’re swinging for the fences.’ Well, he’s turned back into a pure hitter.
“He won’t back down. I’ve seen him take a knuckleball out to right field and I’ve seen him take a 102 mph fastball out to left field. This guy is just relentless about his approach at the plate. He took Kyle Farnsworth deep in 2004 on 100 mph and I’m sitting on deck thinking, ‘Wow.'”
“What’s been interesting is watching him grow this year: from leg kick to overswinging to chasing pitches to turning back into a hitter. When he did that, he started hitting home runs … He’s got another year in him, for sure. I know he’s not going to play, but he could.”
What it’s like facing Pujols
Brad Lidge: ‘I made a mistake — and it wasn’t super surprising that he didn’t make a mistake’
Lidge broke into the big leagues the year after Pujols, and initially, he had some success against the Cardinals slugger. But somewhere around his second or third year in Lidge’s career, teammate Roy Oswalt mentioned that there had been an evolution in the challenge of pitching to Pujols — the holes that you could attack as a pitcher were no longer available.
“All of a sudden, it started to feel like he knew what you were going to throw before you did,” Lidge recalled. “You felt like you had to be perfect … He had so much plate coverage, whether you’re throwing a 97 mph fastball or a slider down and away, you had to be perfect.”
Lidge says that this is the part of Pujols that is often not fully comprehended. He was strong, had great hands, great eyes — but he also could anticipate what the pitcher was going to try to do against him with a high degree of success. “If there was one thing I know from facing him, it’s that he’s going to win the chess match far more than he should,” said Lidge. And if the pitcher was able to execute a big-breaking pitch, Lidge said, Pujols was adept at fouling the ball off to continue the at-bat. Or, if the pitcher was doing something with his glove or his hands to tip off the identity of the next pitch, “he’d be the first guy to see it,” said Lidge.
The Astros bore in on the National League title in 2005, leading Game 5 of the NL Championship Series, and Lidge, the Houston closer, was called on to finish off the Cardinals. With two outs and two on, Lidge spun a good slider and Pujols chased it.
“I tried to come back with [the slider],” Lidge recalled. “I made a mistake” — the ball was down in the strike zone, but over the heart of the plate — “and it wasn’t super surprising that he didn’t make a mistake.” Pujols rocketed a three-run homer over the train tracks in left field in Houston, the ball loudly crashing against the protective glass.
Lidge bumped into Pujols from time to time after that home run, saying hello at All-Star Games, without talking about the home run. What he feels about Pujols now is that he was a hitter “hard-wired” for greatness, physically and mentally.
Greg Maddux: ‘He hit it over frickin’ Waveland Avenue’
“The first time I faced him, I threw him a changeup that he missed by 2 or 3 feet. And I’m going, ‘Wow, OK, maybe we got something here.’ Next time up, I threw the exact same changeup and he hit it over frickin’ Waveland Avenue. And I went, ‘Oh s—, maybe they have something here. This guy is pretty good.’
“If you walked him or gave up a single, you won the AB. He covered the middle of the plate as well as anyone. My game plan with him was to give up a single or less.”
Glendon Rusch: ‘He was the best slugger I faced’
“He was the best slugger I faced that could do the most damage in the most different ways. He could hit a homer off any pitch — a mistake in or off-speed out over the plate the other way, he could do it all. When I was facing him, he was in his prime-prime. He’s the guy that you had to be careful of unless you had a big lead or were down by a bunch because he would take you deep at any time. He was a threat if you made a mistake and if you didn’t make a mistake.”
Ryan Dempster: ‘There is no … more of an expert on how to give up home runs to Albert Pujols than me’
“There is no one out here that’s more of an expert on how to give up home runs to Albert Pujols than me.
“People have talent, people work hard, people are prepared. He coincided with all three probably better than anyone I ever watched or faced. Always diligent about his cage work, his BP, everything. So when the game started, he was like playing a video game with a cheat code. He knew what pitch was coming. If a pitcher fell into patterns, he would take advantage of it. He never gave at-bats away. It could be 10-0 in the ninth and he would give you the same AB as if it were tied. He could hit any pitch out that wasn’t executed, and he could hit the pitches that were executed.
“This has been a perfect storm. They put him in a position to have success against all these lefties, then he goes to the HR Derby and gets locked in. And now he’s feeling really good, so when he faces righties, it’s just carrying over.”
Mike Hampton: ‘I should be thankful … that he didn’t go deep’
The Cardinals’ Opening Day lineup in 2001 was stacked with big names such as Mark McGwire and Jim Edmonds, sluggers who most concerned Mike Hampton. He didn’t know anything about the guy plugged into the sixth spot in the lineup that day, a rookie left fielder named Albert Pujols, who was set to play in his first game.
Hampton recalls that there really wasn’t a lot of information available on Pujols, so the left-handed Hampton figured he’d pitch Pujols the same way he had pitched other right-handed batters. “Sink it away, cut it in,” said Hampton, whose start that day was his first with the Rockies after signing a $121 million deal. He shut out the Cardinals for 8⅓ scoreless innings. “It went down pretty quickly after that,” Hampton joked of his short, rough tenure with Colorado.
One of the five hits that Hampton scattered was a seventh-inning single to Pujols, the first of Pujols’ career. “I should be thankful that it was a single through the 6-hole,” he said, “and that he didn’t go deep.”
There’s nobody else like The Machine
Alex Rodriguez: ‘It was like he was a mad scientist’
Albert Pujols inhabited the NL Central in the first half of his career, and it was because of that history that Alex Rodriguez called Pujols about a pitcher from that division. Rodriguez figured that Pujols would have some observations about the pitcher, about his repertoire. “Usually, that kind of conversation will go on for five minutes,” Rodriguez. “Forty-five minutes — it went on for 45 minutes. He’s telling me about the movement of his curveball, his sinker, his passion coming out of the phone. He gave me the greatest scouting report I’ve ever had.
“If the count is 0-0, he’ll throw you a curveball,” Pujols told Rodriguez. “If he gets ahead in the count, he’ll throw two fastballs inside — but because he wants to get to his changeup.”
Rodriguez thinks back on that conversation now and says, “It was like he was a mad scientist. He was walking me through at-bats with very specific information on what the guy was going to do.
After the game, in which he recalls hitting a double off the pitcher — “The accuracy of the scouting report was incredible,” Rodriguez remembered — Pujols texted Rodriguez immediately. “He wanted to know everything about how it went, what he threw to me, the counts, everything … It’s not only about what the pitcher throws, but he wants to be a chess player, too.”
Dale Scott: ‘He was there to do a job’
There were days when Albert Pujols would pause briefly, as he ran or off the field in between innings, and compliment longtime umpire Dale Scott on his work calling balls and strikes in the previous game. “It might be a situation where he catches your eye and says, ‘Good job,'” said Scott. “But it didn’t happen every time.” Yes, there were days when Pujols wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t say anything, leaving Scott to wonder if he had struggled with his strike zone.
This was all in keeping with Pujols’ intensity, says Scott, who shared fields with Pujols over the past 17 seasons of the umpire’s career. He was gregarious, Scott said, offered a smile and a greeting when he stepped to the plate, “but he was there to do a job.” Pujols didn’t complain out loud about ball-or-strike calls, but if he had an issue with the home plate umpire, he would be passive aggressive — maybe a quick grimace, maybe a step back out of the batter’s box. “If the bench saw it, then they would react to it, or the fans,” said Scott. “He reminded me of Cal Ripken. He was serious … The aura around him was that he was there to work.”
Joey Votto: ‘I’ll never be at that level. I’ll never be that guy’
Votto has a crystal-clear memory of the moment when he recognized the preeminence of Pujols, an at-bat that distinguished him from other hitters — including Votto. “It stands out to me in how it represents how skilled he was, and is,” Votto said.
The Reds first baseman was in his second full season in the big leagues and Cincinnati was hosting St. Louis. The Reds had a 3-0 lead, and Dusty Baker summoned longtime reliever David Weathers from the bullpen.
“Nothing rattled Weathers,” Votto recalled. “He had two-pitch command, a running fastball [inside to right-handed hitters]. He knew how to manage big situations. You knew there was either going to be a ball in play or a strikeout.”
As Votto watched Pujols launch the ball toward left-center field, a monstrous grand slam in a pivotal situation, he remembered thinking: That’s a really good swing — a really good swing on a pitch that looked to be in a good spot.
When he watched the at-bat again on video to see if his initial reaction was correct, Votto saw Weathers attempt to work off the outside edge of the plate, with a backdoor sinker — the ball starting out of the strike zone, zipping toward the left-handed hitter’s batter’s box, before veering back toward the plate. It was a good pitch by Weathers, a good spot, because right-handed hitters had to be cognizant of how his sinker would cut inside. But somehow Pujols had the acumen, the balance and the swing to get to the pitch — and blast it into the seats well beyond left-center field.
“I already viewed him at such a high level,” said Votto. “But after watching it, I realized: I’ll never be at that level. I’ll never be that guy.”
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Mark Schlabach
OXFORD, Miss. — Before sunrise on Tuesday morning, barely a day after Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin set the college football world ablaze with reports that members of his family had visited Florida and LSU, he went to the one place he figured might cool things down — social media.
In a post on his X account, Kiffin encouraged everyone to “have the best Tuesday ever” and included a photo of a page from Brianna Wiest’s self-development book, “The Pivot Year: 365 Days to Become the Person You Truly Want to Be.”
“How do you know what to do next?” the passage said. “You ask yourself, honestly, what your 90-year-old self would advise you to do. What they would have wished you had done. You ask yourself, honestly, what you’ve sensed from the beginning. What you have ignored, what you have quieted and distracted yourself from.”
Wiest encouraged readers to make two lists, one of the positives and one of the negatives, and weigh them.
“And if there is one thing on the left that overpowers the dozen things on the right, then you trust that,” Wiest wrote. “You ask yourself what path will make you more of the person you are meant to be.”
That is the dilemma 50-year-old Kiffin is facing. He has two potential paths.
Stay at the university in the small Southern town with the small stadium (64,038) and small (but growing) trophy case that gave him a second chance in big-time college football when most others wouldn’t.
Or take a job at a bigger university with a bigger stadium in a bigger city that might provide him with a better opportunity to win an SEC title and national championship.
Who is Kiffin meant to be? The coach who has restored his once-sullied public image and seems genuinely happy living in the same small town as two of his children and his ex-wife? Or the coach whose ego won’t let him pass up an opportunity to coach in a stadium with more than 100,000 seats under the brightest lights and on the biggest stage, while potentially leaving another scorned fan base cursing his name after another ugly exit?
“With Lane, nothing is ever off the table, as you probably know,” a source familiar with the situation told ESPN on Tuesday. “I think that LSU is a real threat. There was so much smoke around Florida, but LSU is the one that really scares you.”
Not long ago, Kiffin was a coach with a checkered past who many athletic directors believed wasn’t worth the risk. Now, he’s the hottest commodity in this season’s coaching carousel after leading the Rebels to a 10-1 record and the No. 6 spot in the College Football Playoff selection committee’s latest rankings.
With one regular-season game left, against rival Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl in Starkville on Nov. 28 (noon ET, ABC), the Rebels are in line to make their first CFP appearance and possibly host a first-round game at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Dec. 19 or 20.
“I’m going to say what I’ve done for six years, which is not talk about other jobs and that situation,” Kiffin said during Wednesday’s SEC teleconference. “I love it here and it’s been amazing. And we’re in the season that’s the greatest run in the history of Ole Miss at this point — never been at this point. So I think it’s really exciting, and so I’m just living in the moment that amazing.”
Kiffin has done it with a new quarterback, Trinidad Chambliss, who spent last season at Division II Ferris State in Michigan, and a transfer running back, Kewan Lacy, who leads the FBS with 19 rushing touchdowns. The Rebels are No. 2 in the SEC in total offense (493.8 yards) and passing yards (305.1) and third in scoring (37.2 points).
Indeed, these are heady times for a program that has won only one national championship, in 1960, in the 120-year history of the program. Ole Miss hasn’t captured an SEC title since legendary coach Johnny Vaught guided the team to a 7-1-2 record in 1963, and it hasn’t even played in the SEC championship game since its inception in 1992.
In an interview with “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN on Tuesday, Kiffin said he reminds his players that these are the best of times and to enjoy them.
“Hey, those good old days, you’re in them right now,” Kiffin said. “Someday, 10, 20 years from now, you’re going to be saying, ‘Man, remember that run we had at Ole Miss, and we had that Division II quarterback that would make all those plays, and the running back was leading the country in touchdowns, and there was a dog running around on the field and the players were dunking?’
“I said, ‘You’re in the good old days right now, so just have fun, enjoy it,’ and I think if you watch our team, you see them doing that.”
Will the good times last in Oxford, though?
On Sunday, Kiffin’s ex-wife, Layla; his son, Knox; and his brother Chris’ son visited Gainesville, Florida. Layla and other family members visited the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the next day.
On McAfee’s show Tuesday, Kiffin denied that Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter issued an ultimatum for him to decide about his future.
“Yeah, that’s absolutely not true,” Kiffin said. “There’s been no ultimatum, anything like that at all. And so, I don’t know where that came from, like a lot of stuff that comes out there. Like I said, man, we’re having a blast. I love it here.”
0:44
Paul Finebaum: Lane Kiffin not stopping the Florida speculation
Paul Finebaum offers his take on whether Lane Kiffin wants to leave Ole Miss for Florida.
However, sources told ESPN that Carter is pressing Kiffin for clarity about his future by this coming weekend. Is Kiffin staying at Ole Miss or leaving for Florida or LSU?
Kiffin and Carter declined interviews for this story. An Ole Miss spokesperson told ESPN that Carter prefers for both men to focus on beating Mississippi State, which would secure the Rebels the second 11-win season in school history.
When Kiffin was asked Wednesday whether he was aware of any way he wouldn’t coach in next week’s Egg Bowl, he said, “Of course, I’m coaching. I mean, unless you guys know something [that] I don’t. Or I’m getting fired and I don’t know it.”
It’s unclear whether Carter will allow Kiffin to coach the Rebels in a potential CFP game if he decides to leave after the season. Former New York Giants head coach Joe Judge is in his first season as the Rebels’ quarterbacks coach and might be in position to serve as interim coach if Kiffin leaves.
Attorney Thomas Mars, whose clients have included many college coaches and athletic directors, reviewed Kiffin’s contract and found that, under its terms, “Ole Miss can ‘change or reassign [his] duties’ under certain circumstances, which include him ‘seeking or considering’ employment with another school without giving ‘prior written notice’ to the athletics director.”
If Kiffin or his representatives provided Ole Miss with prior written notice that he was talking to Florida and/or LSU, Mars didn’t see anything in the language of the contract that would legally prevent him from coaching in the CFP.
Kiffin’s list of positives for remaining at Ole Miss might be a lengthy one. After spending much of the early part of his career on the West Coast, as an assistant and head coach at USC and head coach of the Oakland Raiders, he has found an unlikely home in Oxford.
The slower pace has been good for him. He no longer drinks alcohol, doesn’t eat red meat or bread, and does hot yoga every morning at 6. In September, Kiffin told ESPN that he spends many Saturday nights eating pizza and watching college football games with his son, who is a sophomore quarterback at Oxford High School, and his friends.
“That’s what you do when you don’t drink,” Kiffin said.
His daughter Landry is a junior at Ole Miss. His younger daughter, Presley, is a freshman at USC and member of the Trojans’ volleyball team.
When Kiffin was asked Wednesday whether he’d be more hesitant to make a job change now that his kids are older, he said, “I do think that people with time change. And maybe when they’re younger, you make really fast decisions, which I’ve gone on record and said that before, in life [and] in situations. And I think as you get older and more mature and look at things differently, maybe you take longer to make the proper decision.”
Kiffin’s off-field behavior raised concerns for administrators during his previous coaching stops at Tennessee and Alabama, where he was an assistant coach under Nick Saban from 2014 to 2016.
He says he has found self-discipline at Ole Miss. He told ESPN that he even leaves his cellphone in his car most mornings.
“I just keep trying to come up with things to challenge discipline,” Kiffin said. “It started in training camp. I told my assistants, ‘You guys are just as bad as these kids. All you guys are addicted to your phones. I’m going to show you.'”
Kiffin might check his cellphone at lunch to make sure there’s not a family emergency or problem involving a player, but otherwise he doesn’t use it again until about 9 p.m.
“It’s awesome,” Kiffin said. “It’s amazing how much more productive you are. Like, until you do it, you don’t realize how much time you waste. And I’m not even a bad phone guy, as some people are.”
On the field, Kiffin has built arguably the best SEC program outside of Alabama and Georgia, at least in terms of victories the past six seasons. The Rebels are 54-19 in his six seasons — only the Crimson Tide (66-12) and Bulldogs (70-8) have more wins in the SEC since the start of the 2020 season. In fact, the Rebels have the eighth-most wins among power-conference teams during that stretch.
If Kiffin were comparing the Rebels to Florida and LSU six years ago, it might have been an easy decision to leave. However, that might not be the case anymore.
Since the start of the 2020 season, the Gators are 36-37. With a 3-7 record so far this season, they will have their fourth losing campaign in the past six years. Urban Meyer led the Gators to national championships in 2006 and 2008, but they’ve cycled through four coaches since he left after the 2010 season. Florida fired Billy Napier on Oct. 19 after his teams went 22-23 in four seasons.
Layla Kiffin, who moved to Oxford earlier this year to be close to two of their three children, is familiar with Gainesville. Her father, John Reaves, was a star quarterback for the Gators from 1969 to 1971. He left as the NCAA’s leading career passer with 7,581 yards and an SEC-record 54 touchdowns. After playing 11 seasons in the NFL, Reaves was an assistant under Steve Spurrier from 1990 to 1994.
LSU has been better than Florida since the start of the 2020 season, with a 46-27 record. The Tigers have lost at least three games in each of the past six seasons after quarterback Joe Burrow led them to a 15-0 record and a national championship in 2019.
Tigers coach Ed Orgeron was fired less than two years later. His replacement, former Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, was fired Oct. 26 after his teams compiled a 34-14 record in three-plus seasons.
There’s also the current political climate to consider at LSU. Days after Kelly was fired, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry criticized then-LSU athletic director Scott Woodward for agreeing to a 10-year, $95 million contract with Kelly that left LSU on the hook for a $54 million buyout. Woodward stepped down under pressure Oct. 30 and was replaced by longtime LSU athletics administrator Verge Ausberry.
On Nov. 10, Kelly’s attorneys sued LSU’s board of supervisors after the university purportedly notified Kelly that it was seeking to fire him “for cause” to avoid paying his full buyout.
“Crazy doesn’t scare Lane,” a source told ESPN. “That’s probably not going to scare him away.”
A former SEC coach, who hadn’t spoken to Kiffin about the situation, believed Florida and LSU were still better jobs than Ole Miss because of, among other factors, the other schools’ recruiting bases. Kiffin has relied heavily on the transfer portal in building his rosters in the past few seasons; the Rebels brought in 29 transfers this past season.
“It’s really hard to turn over your roster like that every year,” the coach said. “You must be almost perfect in your defensive evaluations, and that’s hard to do. You can’t keep doing it.”
At the very least, though, Ole Miss officials hope the on-field struggles at their SEC rivals will give them a chance to keep Kiffin beyond this season.
“I think he’s going, ‘Well, maybe I can be a national contender here, and they give me everything I want. They let me be me,'” a source familiar with the situation said. “I know that’s easy to say, but, you know, Lane’s not an easy guy. I think we’ve learned how to deal with him and how to manage him and let him be him, and I think he appreciates that. So, yeah, I don’t think we’re out of it by any means.”
If Kiffin leaves Ole Miss, it wouldn’t be the first messy departure in his coaching career. When he abruptly left Tennessee after only 14 months to return to USC as Pete Carroll’s replacement in January 2010, hundreds of students protested outside the football complex, burning a mattress and T-shirts bearing his name.
Kiffin lasted three-plus seasons with the Trojans and was infamously fired in the early-morning hours by athletic director Pat Haden at a private terminal at LAX after an ugly 62-41 loss at Arizona State in the fifth game of the 2013 season.
Then, after Kiffin spent three seasons rebuilding his career as Alabama’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, Saban relieved him of his duties on Jan. 2, 2017, a week before the Crimson Tide were to play Clemson in the CFP National Championship. Steve Sarkisian called the plays in Alabama’s 35-31 loss, and Kiffin left to become the head coach at Florida Atlantic, which had hired him three weeks earlier.
How will things turn out in Oxford? No one knows — at least not yet.
“If there’s one thing about Lane,” a source told ESPN, “it’s that you never know what he’s going to do until he does it.”
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Dan Wetzel
Lane Kiffin will always regret it if he quits on his Ole Miss team.
He’ll always have remorse if he decides to go take another job — Florida or LSU — right on the verge of leading a likely 11-1 Rebels team into the College Football Playoff. He’ll never live down the fact he turned his back on a locker room ready to fight with him for a national title — all for the perceived greener grass of Gainesville or Baton Rouge.
What kind of coach would do that?
This has nothing to do with what job offers more advantages or money or proximity to talent. It has nothing to do with the long term.
Timing is everything in life. Sometimes for the positive, sometimes not. That’s how it works. Adults deal with it.
Kiffin may be free to walk from the Rebels, but everyone else is free to judge him if he does.
If he does, that judgment won’t be positive.
Kiffin, 50, knows drama and setbacks. USC fired him at an airport. Nick Saban bounced him as an Alabama assistant just days before a national title game, convinced he was too focused on his next job as the coach at Florida Atlantic. Al Davis dumped him from the Oakland Raiders and declared he had been “conned” into hiring him in the first place.
Kiffin also knows he has rebuilt his reputation, especially of late in Oxford. A better coach. A better father. A better person. When not discussing football, he talks about how balanced, sober and happy his life has become.
“The whole good old days … I’m in them right now,” Kiffin said Saturday after defeating, coincidentally, Florida. “I just think people don’t realize when they’re in them. And then they get older and they say, ‘Remember that it was great back then?’ You know, I’m just fortunate to be in them.”
Ole Miss is 10-1 heading into next week’s season finale against Mississippi State. The Rebels are primed to host a first-round playoff game, which would arguably be the biggest sporting event in the history of the state. That alone is a seminal moment for a school that has granted its coach every wish it could.
His success has made him a coveted coaching candidate, with two big-time programs seemingly willing to do anything to get him — including ignoring the fact that they are hiring a guy who would walk out on the eve of the postseason.
In a perfect world, this decision would take place after the Ole Miss season. That isn’t how the calendar works, though. UF and LSU need a coach. Returning talent needs to be convinced to stay. Recruits need to be identified.
The high school signing period begins on Dec. 3. The transfer portal opens on Jan. 2.
Ole Miss’ first-round playoff game would occur on Dec. 19 or 20. Win, as Ole Miss would be favored to do, and the quarterfinals are on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
For Kiffin, it’s either stay or go. There is no time to do both. Pledge your allegiance to Ole Miss or walk out and start anew. The former might cost him an opportunity that he always wanted. The latter, however, would define him.
The coach who quit on a playoff team? It’s unthinkable.
Kiffin isn’t saying much, other than general comments about how happy he is at Ole Miss.
“We’re having a blast,” Kiffin said Tuesday on “The Pat McAfee Show.” Adding, “I love it here.”
That said, members of Kiffin’s family — including ex-wife Layla and son Knox, a high school sophomore — visited Gainesville and Baton Rouge in recent days, ESPN and others reported. Kiffin says Ole Miss hasn’t given him an ultimatum timeline, but there is no time like the present to make a decision.
Kiffin should stay and see the season out; attempt to win, try to reach the Final Four or beyond, make the memories, and forge the deep bonds that coaching is supposed to be about.
This has nothing to do with the quality of the opportunity at LSU or Florida. Both schools offer immense resources, commitment and potential. Both sit in talent-rich states. Both have advantages that Ole Miss can’t match, although here in the NIL/portal/revenue share era, the gap has closed.
In different circumstances, he could go; maybe he even should go.
Not in these circumstances, though. Not at this time. Not with a team this good, at a school this supportive, in a season this magical.
Certainly not without causing everyone to wonder if Al Davis was right all along.
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