Outlaw Era: Kiffin & Clark Are Burning Down the Old Guard While Dabo and A'ja Try to Save It | Ep 1230

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**Jason Whitlock** (0:30)
Lane Kiffin just told you exactly what college football has become. And if you still think this is an amateur sport built on education and development, you have not been paying attention. I promise you in the next few minutes, you will understand why we are no longer living in Vince Lombardi's America, why we are living in Al Davis' football America, why Lane Kiffin is the perfect coach for this moment, and why Dabo Swinney is being punished for believing in the ideals that used to define the sport. The news peg is simple. Lane Kiffin stepped to a microphone at LSU and said his players endorse pursuing former NFL players to fill out his roster.
Not high school recruits, not developmental projects, former professionals. Take a list.

**Lane Kiffin** (1:20)
I met with our leadership committee of our players and I asked them, what's your team? What do you want to do?
If these players are allowed to be added to rosters, what do you want to do? And every one of them was emphatic about, they can help us win, bring them. And, you know, we understand that, you know, we have a team that's practiced together, worked together all off season, but one of them said, this is how it works at the next level and this is how the real world works.

**Jason Whitlock** (1:53)
In what world does a college coach lobby to sign ex-pros and his locker room applauds it? In this world, in the world where boosters are writing checks with seven and eight figures, where a roster costs more than a pro payroll did 20 years ago and where everyone has quietly agreed to stop pretending.

**Lane Kiffin** (2:13)
There's that fire. Grab your popcorn.

**Jason Whitlock** (2:16)
That is what happens when you pour more and more money into a formerly amateur sport. Money intensifies pressure. Money eliminates patience. The more the boosters pour in, the more the only thing that matters is winning and losing. No one is paying top dollar to graduate young men in four years or to build character over five. They are paying for championships now, for relevance now, for a return on investment by next Saturday. Education was the fig leaf. Development was the marketing brochure. Winning is the business. And nobody loves winning more than, more nakedly than Lane Kiffin. He is the Al Davis of college football. Just win baby. That was not a slogan for Davis. It was a theology and Kiffin lives it. Al Davis was an outlaw long before being an outlaw was popular. Study his life. He sued his own league. He moved his franchise in the middle of the night. He wore the silver and black like a warning label. He was a disrupter who believed rules were suggestions and institutions were obstacles. Vince Lombardi was order, discipline. The Packers sweep, the Lombardi trophy, the idea that how you win is as important as whether you win. Al Davis was the antithesis of Lombardi. Rebellion over reverence, transaction over tradition. Davis saw himself in Kiffin for a reason. He gave Kiffin an NFL head coaching job with the Raiders at 31 years old. Long before anyone thought Lane was ready because Davis recognized his own DNA.
Kiffin is charming. He is arrogant. He is restless. He is brilliant at offense and even more brilliant at self-preservation. He trolls, he transfers, he reinvents himself at every stop from Tennessee to USC to Alabama to Ole Miss, and now to LSU. He does not build a program the way Lombardi built Green Bay. He survives a storm and makes the storm work for him. Dabo Swinney is Lombardi in this parable.
Dabo is the antithesis of Kiffin, the way Lombardi was the antithesis of Al Davis. For 12 straight years at Clemson, Dabo won 10 or more games, 12 straight, two national championships. He did it by building relationships over four and five years, by redshirting, by developing, by selling parents on education and faith and family and continuity.
Dabo believed the ideals still matter. As the money poured in and the transfer portal opened up, Dabo has become a worse and worse college football coach by the only metric the boosters respect. Two of the last three years, he has won fewer than 10 games. Last year, he won just seven. He was slow to adjust to the portal on purpose. He did not want to live transactionally. He wanted to pastor his players.