Exclusive: In-Depth Lane Kiffin Biography to Drop Just In Time For LSU Vs. Ole Miss

As Vanity Fair’s Chris Smith wrote in his May bombshell profile of LSU’s firestarter head football coach, the Lane Kiffin Show is never dull. When Louisiana State University and the University of Mississippi, Kiffin’s former employer, meet on the gridiron on September 19, 2026, just three games into the college football season, there’ll be even more fuel for the competitive fire. Days before the game, John Talty will publish Lane Being Lane: The Story of Lane Kiffin, College Football’s Agent of Chaos.

“It is a biography, but I think it’s more than that,” Talty tells Vanity Fair. “College sports has undergone unbelievable transformation, especially in just the last six years, and the argument is no one has capitalized more on that change than Lane. I think you can kind of track the evolution of football through Lane Kiffin.”

Also included: A non-zero number of F-bombs, unsurprising given the colorful vocabulary Kiffin has been known to use. “People certainly have very strong thoughts,” Talty says. “Let’s put it that way.”

Talty, the national college football reporter for CBS Sports, is also the author of The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban and co-authored The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Era of Chaos with Armen Keteyian. In Lane Being Lane, Talty will chart the stunning upsets both celebrated and caused by Kiffin throughout his life and his tumultuous career as a football coach, including being named the youngest-ever head coach of an NFL team (in 2007, following several years on the coaching staff at USC, 31-year-old Kiffin took the top job with the Oakland Raiders), his dramatic dismissal from Nick Saban’s Alabama staff right before the team played for the national championship in 2017 (they lost), his most recent explosive move leaving Ole Miss for rival LSU after the close of the 2025 season for a seven-year contract worth $91 million, and more.

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Through explorations of Kiffin’s early life and the continued impact of his father, the deceased legendary Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Monte Kiffin, and more, Talty hopes to offer an in-depth look at the younger Kiffin that will surprise even the most ardent of fans.

“If you’re a hardcore college football fan, they probably know, oh, the time you got fired here, or the time you won a national championship there—it might feel like you know the story, but I think there’s a lot more detail and more depth that will be included in this book.”