To understand Lane Kiffin’s rise at Mississippi, you have to follow along with Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift’s music wields the power to lay bare a listener’s soul. To true Swifties, Taylor isn’t just singing. Her lyrics resonate.

Even Ole Miss’ 49-year-old football coach sees a bit of himself in those lyrics.

Consider Lane Kiffin a Swiftie. He appreciates her music, and although he didn’t embrace Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” with as much vigor as her past work, one song hit home.

“My favorite song would be, ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,’” Kiffin told me recently. He said he sees parallels between his life and the “boy” in Swift’s song.

In “My Boy,” Swift sings: “My boy only breaks his favorite toys. I’m queen of sandcastles he destroys.”

As Swift’s song continues, the music icon hits these punchy notes: “There was danger in the heat of my touch. He saw forever so he smashed it up.”

Snicker, if you like, while you consider Kiffin hearing himself within these lyrics. He’ll permit you that laugh, but he won’t deny reality.

“It might be similar to my life’s path,” Kiffin said during our wide-ranging interview.

Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin watches from the sidelines after an interception during his team’s 2023 game against Vanderbilt at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

Kiffin once was the boy wonder, the mercurial coach of the Oakland Raiders and later at the University of Tennessee, with the beautiful wife and a young family. The seams of that life came apart. He sped out of Knoxville while it flamed in his rear-view mirror. Southern California fired him from his dream job – on a tarmac, no less – in a professional lowlight. His marriage ended in divorce.

While Swift’s song lasts just more than three minutes, Kiffin’s tale didn’t end smashed in L.A. He rebuilt. He’s winning like never before.

Q&A What Lane Kiffin thinks of Taylor…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/understand-lane-kiffins-rise-mississippi-164226485.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2024-06-25 16:42:26

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