Lane Kiffin admits whether he regrets leaving Tennessee for USC

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin doesn’t think he made the wrong decision by leaving Tennessee for USC after one season in Knoxville.

With Lane Kiffin returning to Knoxville to face Tennessee, the question on seemingly everyone’s mind is whether he regrets leaving in the first place.

Now coaching Ole Miss, Kiffin has had an odyssey of a coaching career. He’s not interested in playing with what-ifs.

Lane Kiffin doesn’t regret leaving Tennessee for USC

“I don’t think of it that way,” Kiffin said via Vols Wire. “We didn’t know what was going to happen. We went there, and being told by the powers there, that the Reggie Bush situation, there’s nothing to it, best case scenario, slap on wrist. Then all of the sudden, we go there, put a staff together, start recruiting and we get a two-year bowl ban, thirty scholarships, which is well known, but think about you go in, in your first year all your juniors and seniors can transfer with no penalty. They can just leave. They can go take visits, they can do whatever. They’re not going to be able to play in a bowl for two years. It’s hard to keep them. You’d think very hard to recruit when kids can’t go play in bowl games, and we sign the No. 1 class in the country, loading up before the number took their hit.

“There’s no way to know that, so I don’t sit there and say we should have stayed because we didn’t know that. I like to live in the positive and say, had those numbers not happened, it would have been a totally different story of results on the field. I know that.”

Kiffin did indeed step into an unexpected situation at USC. Despite major NCAA sanctions, he led the Trojans to a 10-2 record in 2011. The trouble started when the 2012 season went downhill and it felt like the head coach’s hold on the program was slipping. Realistically, athletic director Pat Haden pulled the plug too early when he fired Kiffin early in the 2013 season.

Ultimately, Kiffin learned from that experience. He also learned from Nick Saban and his time at FIU. Sometimes the journey doesn’t go the direction you think, but it’s all part of your story. Kiffin knows better than to regret the decisions that put him where he is now.

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