Adapted from Lane Being Lane: The Story of Lane Kiffin, College Football's Agent of Chaos by John Talty to be published by Harper, Sept. 15, 2026. The first book on the most polarizing coach in college sports, Louisiana State University football coach Lane Kiffin, charts his inexorable rise and his impact on the game, as he left a trail of winning teams, bad feelings, and controversy in his wake. You can order a copy of Lane Being Lane here.
Signed copies of the book are also available for order here. Lane Kiffin came off like a man who badly wanted revenge on Ole Miss, but everywhere he turned he was rebuffed. Eventually, he found a target: Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney.
Swinney had just lost talented Cal transfer linebacker Luke Ferrelli to Ole Miss despite his signing with the Tigers and even going to classes on Clemson's campus. Ferrelli, the ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year, took a visit to Ole Miss before signing with Clemson, but the Rebels didn't have a spot available for him. That changed when LSU convinced Ole Miss linebacker T.J.
Dottery to enter the portal and transfer to LSU. Ole Miss pivoted back to Ferrelli, offered him a significant raise over what he was expected to make at Clemson, and added a key piece to its defense. The old-school Swinney wasn't happy over what he thought was blatant tampering.
And while LSU may or may not have just done something very similar in luring Dottery away from Ole Miss, Kiffin egged Swinney on to go public against the Rebels, which he did in a jaw-dropping press conference where Swinney brought the receipts and implored the NCAA to look into the case. "This is a whole other level of tampering," Swinney said in January. "It's total hypocrisy…We have a broken system, and if there are no consequences for tampering, then we have no rules and we have no governance." Kiffin even passed along information, according to multiple sources, to help Swinney in his crusade against Golding and Ole Miss.
Clemson offensive line coach Matt Luke, the former Ole Miss head coach, called his alma mater to give it a heads-up on what Kiffin had helped convince Swinney to do. Ole Miss officials were furious, not only because they now had to deal with another national controversy once Swinney went public with the allegations, but over Kiffin's hypocrisy. "Dabo's one of the main guys when [Lane] was at Ole Miss he would always say that guy's a fraud and I don't like that," says a high-ranking Ole Miss official.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
