The Josh Innes Show - The One Thing That Really Pissed Me Off About Kiffin

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Look, I'm glad Lane Kiffin is coming to LSU. It's gonna bring some life and fun to the program and I'm here for it. Big picture, I don't really feel bad for Ole Miss. It's a transactional business and most of the coaches and players are there for the cash. That said, Lane did one thing that really set me off prior to taking the LSU gig... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, everybody. Welcome in, all up in us. It's been a couple days. Need to have a nice December here. So let's pump out some good content for you guys. A lot of stuff went down in the two, three days we weren't here. Most notably, LSU hired Lane Kiffin, and that started a domino effect of a bunch of coaches getting hired, and Florida hired a coach, and Michigan State hired a coach, and Auburn hired a coach, and Ole Miss hired a coach. But that's not really the big story. Nobody cares about the coaches those other schools. They care about Lane Kiffin because Lane Kiffin is, I don't even think Lane Kiffin's a fascinating guy. I just think Lane Kiffin is a narcissistic asshole. Like big, big picture, I think that Kiffin, I don't even know if he's a narcissist. I don't even think that's fair. I think Kiffin is a sociopath. I think he might be a legit lunatic. Like, I don't know if he has human emotion.

Like, I don't know. Like, he, I am intrigued. I guess I'm fascinated by the guy because I think he's a sociopath. And I felt that way reading some of his stuff this weekend on social media. And there's a lot to get into, obviously, here. So let's play a couple commercials and get into it. So when I say that I think Kiffin is a sociopath, there was a point, and I don't know if this happened late Saturday or early Sunday. I forgot exactly when this happened.

I guess it would have been early Sunday maybe or overnight on Saturday into Sunday. The whole world is talking about Kiffin. It's the biggest story in the world. Ole Miss people are losing their minds. LSU people don't know if Kiffin's coming or not. There's a lot of drama here, okay? The ESPN has Marty Smith camped out at Ole Miss waiting for anything. It's like there's a new pope.

It's everything we see is wild. And there's a point when the account for Lane Kiffin's dog tweets something about the possibility of Ole Miss being in the SEC championship game. And at that point, and look, there were a lot of things that have gone on in this whole process with Kiffin, where you go, this guy's kind of fucking nuts. And maybe he's narcissistic. Maybe he's a sociopath. Maybe he's like spectrumy and doesn't know, which is very possible, by the way. Maybe he's like partially on the spectrum and doesn't understand human emotion in some way.

Or maybe he's just a stone cold asshole. That might be it. But when he goes to social media and he's kind of playing up. this whole thing, that's when you lose me. And it's humorous and it's fun and you're fucking with people and all that. And at the end of the day, it's just college football. It's not life or death. So if you want to fuck

with people, fuck with people. But the reality is, this is fucking with a lot of people's lives. Whether I think it should or you think it should, that's not really the debate. Like, I like sports. I enjoy LSU. I want LSU to win. I'm more excited about LSU now than I was two, three,

four, five weeks ago with Brian Kelly as the coach. So that's good. It gives us a little juice. It gives us a little pop. I'm glad to be back kind of in it. I think we can be competitive. But as I've talked about on this podcast a lot with you guys, and I text a lot about with people like Meltzer and others, my love of sports is really kind of subsided for a multitude of reasons. I think gambling has added to it because you gamble more, you lose kind of interest in your teams. My team's getting really bad, LSU, Saints, Cardinals, getting really bad has really impacted my love of sports. The way people react to sports on social media because

their fucking lunatics has impacted the way I feel about sports in a negative way. I just think, like, I wish I could look at these people being crazy and be like, oh, that's great. No, they're just broken weirdos and I don't know. Like my passion for it has subsided to a degree. Then there are some days I'm really into it and I love it. And then there are other days that my passion just takes a hit, you know. And I'm thinking about that. Like, while I'm not super obsessed with it, there are a lot of people at Ole Miss.

This is their life and death. There's a lot of people at LSU. This is their life and death This is what they live for These are the people Like there's people at LSU still bitching About the outcome of the Oklahoma game As if that game mattered

The season's been over for two months And you're out here You know bitching about the Oklahoma game As if the outcome of that game would have mattered Like there are people who are life and death They live and breathe this shit It is their biggest thing in their world So I get that

Lane Kiffin I guess you can look at this two ways You can say Lane Kiffin is the ultimate heel He's the ultimate troll and this is what he does. And I'd say, okay, fine. My issue is that if Lane Kiffin's going to play the role of troll and the villain, what you can't do after you string people along for weeks trying to determine whether or not you're going to leave,

which I think it's been a foregone conclusion the guy was going to leave Ole Miss, maybe even for months. If you listen to some of the people in Bat Rouge, like my buddy Matt, they'll tell you the guy was planning on leaving for Florida. Then the LSU job opened, and that threw a wrench into it. it and then the team makes the college football playoff and it makes it harder to leave and like there's a lot of factors in this but if like there are people that take this shit super serious and for you to come out and be like you know hey fuck you uh you know god told me to do this or i prayed about this like dude you didn't pray about anything i don't believe that i don't

believe that god told you to do anything i don't believe any of this and i don't think that's the route to take the route to take for me is if you're going to be the bad guys you're guy, be a bad guy. If you want to be the villain, be the villain. But don't come out and give me the stuff about how you prayed and God told you to do all this shit, man. Like, look, you wanted to take a better job, a job that you felt gave you a better chance to win, maybe gave you more money, maybe didn't, whatever. But at the end of the day, man, like going out and saying shit like, well, you know, I prayed on this. Just stay in character, man. Don't break, you know, don't shift. Don't go from being the heel to the, to the face in wrestling parlance like that.

But anyway, that's neither here nor there. The bigger thing is I look at this and I see the way people are reacting and you see this guy. For most of this time, I wasn't really annoyed by the story. Most of the time, I was like, it is what it is. He's holding them hostage. He wants to coach in the playoff. He's going to do whatever he can to coach in the playoff, whatever. But I think he's leaving for LSU.

He ain't staying at Ole Miss. We're going to see what happens. But inevitably, he's going to leave and they're not going to let him coach. And that's that. But I was never really offended by any of it or bothered. I mean, it's entertainment, it's a show, whatever. But when the tweet went out from the dog account this weekend, and it was a screenshot of the SEC Championship field

that had Ole Miss in one of the end zones, and the dog asks, hey, am I allowed into the stadium for this one, which is a shot at Texas not allowing Revely into the stadium? At that moment, I'm like, I think this guy's a fucking lunatic. Like, whether you come to LSU or not, I hope at that point I was hoping he would just because it's funny to watch the old miss people burn and like how fast they turn on people and by the way that's anybody so like I just I enjoy that part of it how people are begging you to stay they say you're the greatest don't leave us then you leave them and they act like you're the biggest piece of shit on the planet and there's a whole bunch of things about it that I find interesting that about the human part of all of this but I was never at any point mad or at any point like you know lanes a piece of shit or any of that I'm like it is what it is he's trying to string this thing along as as far as he can because he wants to coach in the championship game and wants to coach in the playoffs.

I'll vie with that. When the dude tweeted as the fucking dog and it kind of floated out the hope that, hey, look, we might make the SEC championship game. Let's see what happens. That pissed off Ole Miss people. That pissed off LSU people. And I'm like, dude, you're a fucking lunatic. Like, bro, what are we doing here?

I understand that you're about to make a decision that's going to piss off a lot of people in Mississippi. and it's going to undo a lot of what you tried to fix with your brand and your whole your whole vibe and your whole image and all that. This is a difficult decision. To be the bad guy, to be the heel and piss off a lot of people is, look, it's a tough spot. No one wants to be, you know, full on hated, right? But you made the decision. It's a tough decision. I respect that it's a tough decision.

Fine. But, but when you go with the dog shit, like Jilly sent me that on Sunday morning, driving around, trying to find some place to walk Ross, it's snowing, it's miserable. And I got that. I just said, fuck this guy. Like, this guy is clearly a sociopath. This guy is just a broken human, and I don't know if he's fixable. Now, I hope that this gentleman wins a lot of football games for LSU, and it's worth LSU's money,

and they're playing in the playoff every year. I hope that's the case. And I'm looking forward to a lot of fun shit. I think those games against Ole Miss are going to be fucking a lot. electric and violent, and there's going to be fights, and it's going to be crazy. And all of that is real. But, and I don't feel bad for the Ole Miss people, because by the way, they had to take lane from somewhere else.

Like every coach came from somewhere else. You didn't just pluck a coach from thin air. So everybody at Ole Miss who was like, oh, my God, he left us. Yeah, well, he left Florida A&M or wherever they have, Florida Atlantic to come coach your school. So you were a better job. LSU he viewed as a better job, you know, so I don't feel bad for you. You built a team that's in the college football playoff more than likely around a bunch of players who left other schools to come to your school. Like, I don't feel bad for you.

I don't feel bad for any of these schools in these situations because this isn't real life. It's sports. I don't feel bad for you. It's just, it's a different world. This is not in 1975. It's 2025. It's a different planet that we're on now. The only moment in that whole process where I was like, this guy is.

truly a fucking psycho and I question whether or not he's even a normal human or if this guy is a droid if he is a cyborg is he a robot is he somehow like on the spectrum and doesn't know or does he really just love to sit back and be a total dickhead and be a puppet master and drive people wild because you hear that all the time about kiffin like oh the guy loves social media nobody does social media better than lane kiffin and maybe that's true like the guy works it in social media everything he hear is that he's great in social media but you put in an interview or a press conference and he's a weird kind of awkward dude. But you get him on a computer, he can be the coolest guy in the room and do whatever the

fuck he wants and be an asshole and be smooth and whatever. At the end of that, though, and look, I'm glad he's coaching LSU. For no other reason, I didn't want the Ole Miss people to have the joy. And really, it was I didn't want them to believe because this is how it would have been spun. It would have been spun that the whole time he was going to stay at Ole Miss. But he decided to just dick around with LSU to ruin their chances of recruiting dudes or get a good coach and that's how these idiots would have spun it and the idiots would have believed it because idiots are idiots and they would have and even though i know

that that would not have been the case it would have pissed me off reading people saying stupid shit so for no other reason give me that reason as to why i'm glad laying kiff and coach's lsue and i think they're going to win some games and i think they'll be fine at least they'll be fun if nothing else they'll be interesting they were not interesting with brian kelly he was a total pud uninteresting hated the guy this will at least be fun but And again, I'm not feeling sorry for Ole Miss, any of that. But when I've got Ole Miss people, like, just hanging on every word this guy says, and he's tweeting from his fucking dog's account about, hey, we're going to the SEC championship game.

Like, that's the kind of shit that bitchy girlfriend who's either going to get back together with you or is going to break up with you. I've lived that life. I have lived that fucking life. And it's the worst. when like you're dating someone and they're kind of broken up with you and like they're clearly banging some other guy but then they'll call you and dick you around a little bit and say hey can I come over and hang out for a while or hey I kind of miss you or like they'll like they get in their feels randomly and send you shit about how they miss you and you're like you don't miss me

why are you fucking messaging me you broke up with me leave me the fuck alone and I think that's kind of what happened when I saw the kiff and dog tweet right like I'm like leave these people the fuck alone. Make your decision and go. That was my, like, I'm not mad about the way he left. To a degree, it's a victim of the way the calendar falls, and I agree with people who are saying that. That is reality. It is a bullshit calendar

that the way things work out, you need to have a coach in place in December so you can hit the portal and all that. I don't think the way he handled that part of it was poor. It sucks to be in that position, right? Like, you have to make that choice. It's a bullshit situation. But what you didn't have to do,

and stoking the flames is one thing, But stoking the flames and kind of fucking with the people who are clearly in love with you and you're their guy is really fucking dickish. And that's coming from someone who's done a lot of dumb shit on social media that can be considered dickish. Like, bro, cut the shit. Like, again, I don't feel bad for those people because it's a totally transactional business now anyway. Kiffin's going to leave LSU in five years to go coach somewhere else. This is the way this works. These dudes aren't lifers in these places anymore.

He basically admitted that. He's like, I like to go from place to place and rebuild places. He'll stay here for three, four, five years. And if Alabama fires DeBoer, Texas fires Sark, who knows? Or if the NFL calls. Okay. But the dog thing was just like, why would you do that to those people? Like, we could sit there and make jokes about how unimportant college football is.

And in the big picture it is. But to treat people in such a shitty way makes me question you as a person. So yeah, I'm going to root for you And I'm going to support you and I want you to win And I'm going to enjoy that the Ole Miss people are going to be super pissed about your existence And they're going to throw shit at you And it's fun I'm glad that we're on the side of being the heel that everybody's going to hate

That's fucking great I'm looking forward to that But the only moment in this whole process Where I was like, this is absurd This guy's a piece of shit Was the tweeting from his fucking dogs account About the SEC championship game And about how they're going to go to the SEC championship game

I thought that was total fucking psycho, psycho behavior. All right, I got a lot to get into on this, but that was the first thing that came to mind was just the psycho behavior of this guy. Like, I don't think, this dude ain't normal. This dude is a weird dude. And you don't know, it's kind of like you talk about receivers in the NFL. Like, are they, do you have to be a weird asshole to be a great receiver or does being a great receiver create you being an asshole? I don't know if Kiffin is just like. a weird person that's got fucked up issues, or if he's just an asshole.

He may just be an asshole who enjoys watching shit burn. I don't know. But anyway, more to come.