Lane Kiffin's Daughter And A Slideshow Played A Role In Him Staying At Ole Miss And Not Bolting For Auburn

The narrative about Lane Kiffin being some mischievous loose cannon is still stuck on the minds of plenty of college football fans. Suppose you do enough digging, and believe that everything written on the Internet is true. In that case, it's understandable that there are fans out there who can differentiate between today's version of Lane Kiffin and, let's say, the same one who left Tennessee after one season to take the USC head coaching job.

Kiffin will never change everyone's mind or their perception of him, but everyone in his tight-knit circle and certainly those paying attention to everything going on in Oxford, are well aware that he is a changed man.

Perhaps the most profound example of this is the simple fact that he's entering year five as the head coach at Ole Miss.

Late in the 2022 season and fresh off a beatdown loss at Arkansas, the writing was on the wall that Kiffin was going to leave Ole Miss to take the head coaching job at Auburn. It was the biggest coaching rumor of the 2022 campaign and plenty of outlets ran with the report that Kiffin had a foot out of the door in Oxford.

Fast forward to today, and it's no secret that Auburn wanted to hire Kiffin before ultimately turning to Hugh Freeze, and it's also no secret that Kiffin's ears were very much open.

But then, family entered the equation.

It's hard to imagine Lane Kiffin leaving Ole Miss for another college coaching job with his family roots now planted in Oxford, Mississippi. Brett Patzke-USA TODAY Sports

Kiffin's oldest daughter, Landry, moved to Oxford for her senior year of high school and is now a sophomore at Ole Miss, and she and her friends played a serious role in keeping him from accepting the Auburn job.

Chris Low of ESPN recently spent a few days with the Kiffins in Oxford, and beyond catching a stray about being a Coca-Cola fan, he learned intimate details about the dynamic that kept Kiffin at Ole Miss.

"You left me one time for another job when you went to Alabama, and now I'm here with you and you're going to do it again?" Landry asked her father, according to Low. 

Then came a slideshow, compete with music, that Landry and her friends put together showing all of them together during their first couple of seasons at Ole Miss. It's safe to say that there were plenty of photos as well, given that Kiffin had gotten so involved with Landry and her friends that they had a group chat with the name ‘Modern Family’ going. Kiffin's nickname was ‘Sparky’ as he was outed as a Nicholas Sparks fan as well.

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"I think he's where he needs to be right now, not just for me, but for him too," Landry told Low. "It's a different version of my dad for sure. He's more involved with everything, more aware, and it wasn't always this way. It's been awesome to see. We all love seeing him like this."

While Landry sharing the same zip code as her father has played a monumental role in keeping him both in town and grounded at Ole Miss, the Kiffin pack in Oxford is about to get even stronger.

Kiffin's son, Knox, is already a superstar on the sidelines of every Ole Miss game, but the plan is to have him move to Oxford as well next summer and play football at Oxford High School. Knox happens to be a quarterback.