ORLANDO, Fla. — Good news, Gator fans — the Lane Kiffin sweepstakes just got a lot easier.
Why? Because LSU — seemingly Florida’s main competition for college football’s hottest coaching candidate (unless an NFL team suddenly enters the picture) — just launched itself into a swamp of its own making.
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While Florida is presumably lining up boosters and debating whether $150 million is too much to pay for Kiffin, LSU is too busy trying to cheat its last coach out of $54 million to focus on hiring its next one.
That’s right: The same LSU that bragged about landing Brian Kelly on a 10-year, $95 million “fully guaranteed” deal is now pretending that “guaranteed” means “unless we change our minds later.” Kelly just filed a lawsuit in which he claims LSU, after firing him, suddenly decided he wasn’t “formally terminated” — and, for good measure, declared they could be firing him “for cause” weeks after he packed up his office.
You can’t make this up. LSU basically fired Kelly, watched their athletic director resign under political pressure, and then said, “Wait, actually, you don’t get your money because we’ve decided we didn’t really mean it.”
That’s not how contracts work — that’s how toddlers negotiate bedtime.
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And this is the program that thinks it’s about to outbid Florida for Lane Kiffin?
Puh-leeze!
You think Kiffin — a man who was fired on the airport tarmac at USC and stiffed out of his contract buyout when he was fired by the Oakland Raiders — is going to trust LSU with a “guaranteed” deal? He’d sooner trust Ed Orgeron to proofread his contract.
LSU’s lawyers are currently trying to redefine “termination” like it’s a philosophy class. Meanwhile, the Gators can sit back, sip their sweet tea and watch this Baton Rouge buffoonery unfold. Every headline about LSU’s contract shenanigans makes Florida look like the saner, safer destination for Kiffin — which is saying something, given Florida just paid Billy Napier $21 million to disappear.
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But at least Florida paid Napier what he was owed.
If you’re Lane Kiffin, the choice now looks easy: Florida’s chaos is garden-variety SEC chaos. LSU’s chaos comes with subtitles and a parental advisory.
By trying to stiff Kelly, LSU doesn’t just lose credibility — it loses the trust of every top-tier coach out there.
Seriously, what coach in his right mind is signing a $100 million deal with a school that treats “guaranteed” money like it was written on a Waffle House napkin at 2 a.m.
So go ahead, LSU. Keep inventing new definitions of “for cause.” Keep pretending you didn’t actually fire Brian Kelly. Keep proving to the rest of the football world that your contracts are written in disappearing ink.
LSU’s buffoonery is embarrassing for them — but it’s beautiful for the Gators.
Turns out, the best recruiting pitch Florida could ask for is LSU’s incompetence.
