• Lane Kiffin once craved a statue. Now, the Ole Miss football coach quests for peace and emotional sobriety. But, can his career also reach new heights? ‘What’s to say you can’t do both,’ he says.
• Lane Kiffin’s dad was his hero. Monte died last July. His legacy inspires Lane, but his passing left a void.
• Lane Kiffin describes 2024 as a harsh year for him, but having so much of his family nearby helps him progress.

Lane Kiffin calls me back on a Saturday afternoon. He wants to chat about rocking chairs.

Kiffin has been thinking since we last spoke 12 days previously. Among the topics on his mind: rocking chairs. They’re a symbol for the evolution he sees in his life.

In Kiffin’s five years coaching Mississippi football, he’s changed his views on these quintessential furniture pieces that populate Southern verandas and living rooms. When Kiffin arrived in charming and cozy Oxford, he considered the idea of rocking in place maddening.

Like, why would someone sit and do nothing but rock back and forth?

“That seems miserable and a waste of time,” Kiffin remembers thinking, “sitting in a rocking chair and just having a conversation with somebody and watching people drive by.”

Kiffin, 49, spent much of his career speeding toward what’s next. Next opponent, next job, next big move.

Kiffin says his years coaching Ole Miss have changed him – that he needed this place more than it needed him, that he needed to slow down, recalibrate, find some peace and relish the moment.

He credits former girlfriend Sally Rychlak, with whom he enjoyed a four-year relationship that ended last fall, for teaching him the ways of Mississippi and how to be more caring and engaged with fans he encountered. The outpouring of remembrances after his dad, Monte, died last summer showed Kiffin that a man is remembered more for the lives he affects