Lane Kiffin’s College Football Playoff crying tour is hilariously missing the point

The Lane Train has rolled into Whining Station to become the Complain Train. As Lane Kiffin is watching the College Football Playoff from the comfort of his own couch like the rest of us, he is doing his part of being the ultimate armchair quarterback. Yes, he leads a top-15 team in the country, but Ole Miss went 9-3 overall and 5-3 in SEC play with losses to Florida, Kentucky and LSU this year.

While the LSU defeat is not the end of the world, nor is the Florida loss, falling at home to what would be a 4-8 Kentucky team during homecoming is why the Rebels still have not made it into the College Football Playoff in their history. They did have two high-quality wins with dominating performances over Georgia and South Carolina, but at the end of the day, you resume has to mean something, right?

Then again, teams like Indiana and SMU who got in with at-large bids, who did not have a single high-quality win between the two of them, got chewed up and spit out by perennial powers in Notre Dame and Penn State, respectively. The Fighting Irish and Nittany Lions showed that not only they belonged, but have a real shot at winning the first 12-team playoff. You know who does not? Ole Miss!

Kiffin may be miffed about the lack of excitement in the first two games, but we have nine more left.

People tend to forget that the first decade of the playoff was defined by the blowouts every season.

Lane Kiffin complains like there is no tomorrow about not being in playoff

This was the year that Ole Miss needed to put it all together. Kiffin had routinely won 10 or more games annually since taking over in Oxford. This was a team led by a seasoned starting quarterback in Jaxson Dart. Kiffin also made a few marquee pickups in the transfer portal, none more profoundly impactful than Walter Nolen coming over from Texas A&M to wreak havoc in the trenches for them.

What we saw out of Ole Miss was more of the same. Kiffin was again too play in games that Ole Miss needed to win. The LSU loss was understandable. The Florida defeat was less than ideal. Falling at home to Kentucky was deplorably bad. Even though teams like Indiana and SMU did not have a win the caliber of what Ole Miss had over Georgia or South Carolina, they had no bad losses this season.

To put this all in perspective, we may not get any wholesale changes to the playoff format after this season, but how these games shake out may impact the way the Selection Committee goes about putting together the 12-team field. While you cannot have multiple bad losses, perhaps strength of schedule will play a more important factor in determining the field next year? Water will find its level.

For now, we can only hope that Kiffin is enjoying himself in the final days before Christmas arrives.