In Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the “powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity” wafts through the Mississippi night. During this weekend’s Lane Kiffin soap opera, mendacity was the order of the day from Oxford to Baton Rouge. 

Over just a few weeks, Kiffin nuked his carefully rebuilt image. On the cusp of the College Football Playoff, he quit on his Ole Miss players to defect to LSU. But Big Daddy Lane had help as other key players humiliated themselves in the court of public opinion. Left out of the equation, of course, were the players who trusted Kiffin’s promises and the fans who pay everybody’s salaries. 

Here’s a power ranking of three of the biggest hypocrites in the tawdry saga, which resulted in another black eye for college football:

Lane Kiffin: We were told the coach who burned his bridges with Tennessee, USC, Alabama, and the Oakland Raiders had changed, matured. But guess what? Kiffin is going to Kiffin. The coach whom Al Davis called “a professional liar” wants to have his cake and eat it, too. If you want to walk out on your team for a better opportunity at LSU, go ahead. But don’t tell Ole Miss you still want to coach the team through the College Football Playoff. And don’t threaten to raid the coaching staff and roster on the way out unless you get your way. No wonder the Rebels threw Kiffin’s clothes out on the street. 

It took Kevin Negandhi of ESPN to state what should have been obvious from the get-go: It’s a conflict of interest for one coach to effectively run two football programs at the same time. Did anybody really believe Monday’s ridiculous LSU press conference, where Kiffin said he doesn’t know how much he’ll make as Tigers coach? (Answer: $91 million over seven years.) About the only truth coming out of the stated performance was that super-agent Jimmy Sexton is the puppet master of college football. Super Bowl–winning coach Bill Cowher panned Kiffin’s behavior during an appearance with Dan Patrick. “Are you kidding me? Seriously? To even ask that question is arrogance,” said Cowher about Kiffin’s request to coach the Rebels through the CFP. “I think what happened there is a disgrace to the coaching profession. The coaching profession is about developing young men—it’s not about chasing the greener grass to somewhere else. Being an ambulance chaser.” 

Nick Saban: The irascible coach dented his new, more likable image as a TV analyst and elder statesman by advising his former Alabama assistant on the move to LSU. As my Front Office Sports colleague Amanda Christovich asked: Why is a College GameDay analyst advising Kiffin on a decision that will reshape college football? Why was Saban running cover for Kiffin on GameDay? When Christovich reached out to ESPN (which, by the way, holds the TV rights to the SEC), it declined to comment. On the other hand, maybe Saban is the perfect guy to ask since he lied through his teeth about leaving the Miami Dolphins for the Alabama job back in 2007. If the old saw is true about college coaches only lying when their lips are moving, these two are made for each other. At least Saban admitted later he was full of it when he denied interest in the Crimson Tide. Will Kiffin do the same? 

Gov. Jeff Landry: What happened to the Louisiana governor who went on a scorched-earth media tour decrying fired Tigers coach Brian Kelly’s $54 million buyout. The next LSU coach would have a “patently different contract,” vowed Landry. Oops. Kiffin’s potential buyout of $72 million would be bigger than Kelly’s. No matter. The governor is waving pom-poms for Kiffin’s hire, excitedly telling Fox News, “All I can tell you is we got a great big, beautiful Lane coming to LSU now.” Can you smell what’s coming out of LSU? That would be the unforgettable odor of mendacity.

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.”   

Dick Vitale and Charles Barkley have more than 100 years in basketball between them, and now they will be calling two college hoops games together.

ESPN, TNT, and CBS announced Vitale and Barkley will be calling Indiana-Kentucky on Saturday, Dec. 13 on ESPN (with play-by-play broadcaster Dave O’Brien) and will also be together for a game during the 2026 NCAA tournament’s First Four on truTV.

ESPN and TNT Sports have worked together on a number of initiatives in recent years. Notably, ESPN engineered a trade in which it is licensing Big 12 football and basketball games to TNT in return for the right to air Inside the NBA—the iconic studio show featuring Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and host Ernie Johnson. The program continues to be produced by TNT and licensed to ESPN. 

ESPN is also sublicensing College Football Playoff games to TNT, an arrangement that will expand in future seasons. 

“Dick and Charles are two of the most entertaining and iconic voices in basketball, so having them together on the same broadcast is a true gift for fans,” ESPN president of content Burke Magnus said in a statement. “We are thrilled to have it come to fruition, especially for a marquee college basketball rivalry game like Indiana-Kentucky in primetime on ESPN.”

CBS Sports has previously invited Vitale to be part of NCAA tournament coverage, but he declined. 

“This is a unique opportunity for Dick and Charles, two of the biggest personalities in the game, to be side-by-side calling games for the first time,” TNT Sports EVP and chief content officer Craig Barry said. “This is great for the game and the fans; we can’t wait to see what unfolds.”