Lane Kiffin fires back at anonymous sources with emojis and SMHs

Here’s a tweet of a story by Matt Hayes about Lane Kiffin’s “last chance” at a head coaching job.

Regarding the “screwed up” part, here are tweets by a couple college football writers, comparing Kiffin’s time at USC to a couple other prominent coaches.

And here’s Kiffin co-signing those tweets (tweeting like a teenager is part of Kiffin’s brand, yes).

Later, in an answer to a question about whether the article bugged him:

“I don’t think it really bugs me (but) it really bugs me when people write an article that puts no names in it,” Kiffin said. “Everything negative in the article is just referring to an unidentified source — that part really bugs me. It is what it is.”

One former colleague of Kiffin is quoted as saying, “He’s completely unaware of his impact on others. When you’re a coach, everything you say and do is not only scrutinized by the media and your boosters, but modeled by your players. Eventually, that will eat away at what you’re trying to build until there is nothing left.”

There’s no question Kiffin’s failed as a head coach overall and rubbed people the wrong way at Oakland, Tennessee, and Alabama, at least.

He’s now on head coaching job No. 4 after leaving four straight gigs awkwardly. And that USC run included arguably the most disappointing team in college football history, based on rankings.

But I do think it’s fair to argue that his time with the Trojans would be remembered much more favorably if he’d managed to have his 10-2 season later in the process, rather than in Year 2, but you don’t get to pick things like that. And it’s certainly fair to point out USC was in the middle of NCAA sanctions, at one point 41 scholarship players shy of 85.

Kiffin’s treating FAU like one kind of last chance, at least, bringing in a load of Last Chance U players, along with a bunch of other blue-chips. B/R used the name of the TV show in its tweet, you see.