How a CBS Sportswriter Captured Viral Lane Kiffin Airport Scene

CBS Sports reporter John Talty’s initial plan to cover Lane Kiffin’s fractious exit from Ole Miss was to hang around the facility and get reactions from players. LSU hoped to fly Kiffin, his family, and his cohort of coaches out of Tupelo. But the plane was diverted to Oxford, and Talty made it to the airport in time to witness the vitriolic scene of Kiffin’s gang getting harangued as they boarded the private jet to Baton Rouge. 

“One of the unique things about the SEC is people will come to the airport, but usually it’s to cheer on and celebrate a coach coming to their school,” Talty, who has covered SEC football for more than a dozen years, told Front Office Sports. “So I’ve seen that happen a few different times at different schools where fans, whether it’s at Tuscaloosa, Starkville, wherever, fans will get to the airport ahead of time and cheer on the new coach. And it’s kind of a weird scene, but I’ve seen that happen plenty of times. I can’t remember, at least from my experience, something like what I saw on Sunday.”  

College football reporters and fans are distinct from any other sports in that they are frequently tracking private jets this time of year. When Talty realized LSU’s plane had been diverted from Tupelo to Oxford, he was hardly alone.

“I got there as soon as I saw that they were diverting to Oxford. I parked and sat in my car and it was quiet for a little bit, and then a stream of cars just came flying in,” Talty said. 

Everyone who boarded the plane with Kiffin got heckled.

“Literally anyone who was getting on the plane was getting middle fingers and getting cursed out,” Talty said. “It didn’t matter who it was. … Lane Kiffin’s [high-school-age] son was one of those people and he’s getting yelled at. His ex-wife was getting on the plane. She was getting yelled at and cursed out.”

Another peculiar element of the whole Kiffin saga was Nick Saban’s involvement. On ESPN on Saturday, he was advocating for Kiffin to be able to coach Ole Miss for the remainder of the season despite his impending exit to LSU. Saban once fired Kiffin from his staff at Alabama right before the national championship game, feeling that Kiffin, his offensive coordinator at the time, was too focused on his own job search. At his introductory presser at LSU on Monday, Kiffin revealed that Saban (who once won a national title at LSU) had advised him to take the job in Baton Rouge.

Talty covered Saban closely at Alabama and wrote a book on the coach’s leadership principles.

“Maybe this is just the mellowing of Nick Saban, and he’s a TV personality now and he’s not a coach,” Talty said. “But some of what has happened with Lane at Ole Miss over the last few weeks are things that he never would have accepted as Lane’s boss at Alabama.

“He famously fired Lane in between a national semifinal and the national championship, and Lane is still the only one to my knowledge that that has ever happened to,” Talty continued. “And I can remember I wrote about it in my book that Nick was very frustrated with how that process was playing out. Lane had already taken the FAU job. Saban felt like he was distracted and had not prepared accordingly for that Washington semifinal. He felt like the team’s performance reflected that and made the decision to get rid of him.”