You don’t have to feel bad for Lane Kiffin. He puts himself in these situations.
Friday night, he posted a photo of two “Make Baton Rouge Great” hats on X and tagged Donald Trump. Plenty of people assumed it meant the LSU coach was showing loyalty to the president. Conservatives reveled in Lane owning the Libs. Liberals chided him for being somewhere between tone deaf and callous.
By Saturday afternoon, the ICE raids championed by Trump had killed a second American citizen in Minneapolis. Kiffin took down the post. The internet was there to remind him that we already saw.
For the record, Fox News claims that Kiffin replaced the original post with one that reads “Remember, red and blue make purple. We can all get along,” but upon inspection, that post is clearly about wanting Ole Miss fans to still like him.
Remember Red and blue make purple. We can all get along. @OleMissFB @LSUfootball 🦈🐅 https://t.co/bv6nS01vqu
— Lane Kiffin (@Lane_Kiffin) January 24, 2026
It’s very possible that Kiffin blindly supports Trump. Maybe he sees an image of a five year old being detained by ICE and thinks to himself that we’re in good hands. I can see why you might believe that, but I have another theory: Maybe Lane Kiffin is just a loser.
The evidence is there. Sure, it’s easy to see one tweet and jump to the conclusion that Lane is out in these streets trying to make America great again, but it is just one tweet. Kiffin has a long history of following trends just so everyone knows he was part of them.
Remember Bitmojis? They were little cartoons that were used by the stupidest people you know to illustrate their every action and emotion on social media. Lane Kiffin couldn’t get enough of them.
His love of Taylor Swift is no secret, but Kiffin really goes into overdrive when she is dominating the headlines. A new album? A new twist in her romance with Travis Kelce? That’s when he wants the world to know he is a Swiftie.
Just like with Trump, Kiffin has a history of tagging Swift in tweets. Now, it could mean that he loves them both unconditionally. But being a student of Lane Kiffin’s redemption myth, I think it’s more about being part of what people are talking about.
Kiffin is chronically online. We should talk about him the same way we did Hugh Freeze before Auburn allegedly made one of the conditions of hiring Freeze that the coach get off the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The only reason we don’t is that Freeze would engage people he had no business engaging.
Lane Kiffin is just as thirsty for adoration and praise. If he were a toddler, he’d be tugging at your pant leg saying “Look at this! Look at this!” It’s annoying, but still kind of cute, when a kid acts that way. It’s sad when an adult does it.
He should know that this is transparent and not exactly cute, right? Well, I’m not so sure. College football provides a lot of cover for these guys.
Fans treat their team’s coach as if he is above reproach. That should have been over in Oxford the second Lane Kiffin started playing footsie with other SEC schools, and maybe it was for some people. Between the ridiculous cover analysts provided and a fawning pseudo-documentary though, ESPN gave Kiffin plenty of reason to believe the world saw what he was doing as very cool and normal.
College football has never been the real world. College GameDay has been covering the sport through a very narrow lens since long before Nick Saban joined the cast. Kiffin’s former boss just helped to kick things into overdrive.
It’s easy to not like Lane Kiffin. You don’t need to make assumptions about his political beliefs. The way the women in the Oxford hot yoga community talk, the guy doesn’t seem to believe in much of anything other than getting his picture taken and posted.
Lane Kiffin needs to get these wins. He WANTS to get these clicks. It’s what drives him more than anything else. He portrays himself as a matcha mom on Instagram, where matcha moms thrive. He may or may not pretend to have a dog on TV, where most dog owners will see him.
Lane Kiffin can annoy you, but he cannot hurt you. He is an unserious person. He just has to be taken seriously because of his job. That means he can really only hurt Louisiana. But they are used to that by now
About Demetri Ravanos