Tennessee Football: What if Lane Kiffin Never Left the Vols?

Monte Kiffin says his son, Florida Atlantic Head Coach Lane Kiffin, should have stayed with Tennessee football. What if he never left the Volunteers?

As Lane Kiffin prepares for his first season with Florida Atlantic, he is a much more humble person than the one who bolted the Tennessee football program in the middle of the night for the USC Trojans in 2010.

His father, Monte Kiffin, is back with him as his defensive coordinator. And he is in a much quieter place than he has been over the past decade.

Of course, the humbling came after he was fired by USC in 2013 and had trouble finding a job…until Nick Saban made the genius move to bring him on board.

Still, seven years later, Monte Kiffin resurrected an idea that his son likely feels but would be too prideful to admit. Speaking with Chris Low, he said they never should have left Tennessee.

This begs the question nobody has really asked: What if Lane Kiffin never did leave Tennessee? We know what happened at USC, but honestly, he got the short end of the stick there.

The Trojans were decimated by the Reggie Bush sanctions. So Kiffin had a very thin roster the entire time he was there. He over-achieved with the thin roster in 2011, raising expectations for 2012. But with a thin roster, any injury would’ve derailed the season. They had many.

That wouldn’t have happened if he could have put together a full roster in Knoxville. So whether or not he’s glad he left the Tennessee football program, he would have been in a much better situation had he stayed.

Unfortunately, him leaving hurt his career and the trajectory of the Vols. After all, he left two weeks ahead of Signing Day and destroyed the roster in the process. So the move significantly hurt both parties.

But what if he had stayed? We’ll take a look at that here. This is the way things would have gone had Kiffin stayed in Knoxville.