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By Jordan Sigler
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In November, there appeared to be a three-way race for Lane Kiffin between Ole Miss, Florida and LSU.
More News: Legendary College Football Coach to Step Down After Bowl Game
About a week before Kiffin made a dramatic exit from Ole Miss, the smoke surrounding Kiffin and the Gators had dissipated. On Nov. 30, ESPN reported Florida was hiring Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall to replace Billy Napier.
Read More on NCAA
On the same day, the Gators hired Eagles executive David Caldwell as their general manager of football operations (which might have thrown a wrinkle or two in its national coaching search).
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Former sports agent Ben Dogra explained to Newsweek why LSU would be a more favorable job than Florida for an elite head coach like Kiffin.
After all, the Gators had seen consistent success under head coaches Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer. While the Tigers have won multiple national championships since the 2000s (with pockets of success), Nick Saban was the only coach to leave on his own terms.
"LSU is considered a much better job than Florida," Dogra said. "It's an easier job for the coach. There's more NIL money there. It's just easier, so that's always going to be the first preference. Now, I'm not saying that the Florida job is not good. It's a very good job, but it's not LSU."
While the head coach in Gainesville has recruits in his backyard, LSU has more money to pay them.
"The recruiting base for LSU is you go right into Alabama and Florida, but the NIL money is very large, and LSU is one of the most prestigious jobs in college football, period, bar none," Dogra said. "And in fact, a prominent NFL GM told me it's better than seven NFL jobs."
Florida's power structure is much different than LSU's. If Kiffin had taken the job with the Gators, he'd have been beholden to 20 or so powerful boosters in addition to athletic director Scott Stricklin.
"If you go into the swamp, you have to deal with 20 boosters," Dogra said. "It depends what you want, but you can have a Mercedes fully loaded, versus a really nice BMW, but it's not fully loaded."
This year, the buzz around the coaching carousel was primarily dominated by the SEC. To put it another way, Kiffin was never linked to Penn State despite that job coming open in early October.
There's good reason for that.
While Big Ten schools like USC, Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State have money and prestige, the pipeline in the South is deep, and the spigot is less likely to be cut off despite a run of poor seasons.
"You don't have that captive audience, and you have less of a bandwidth if you're not successful, because those boosters will cut off the money, and then they can take the same money and put it into Netflix or otherwise to invest somewhere else," Dogra said. "But in the South, they live and die by the sword."
So much for the theory of car dealerships in the SEC versus the new triumph of Hollywood, tech and financial centers in the Big Ten.
Ohio State won the national championship in 2024, and the Buckeyes are primed to make another run this season. Still, LSU is set to outpace the Buckeyes by nearly $10 million in rev share in 2026.
Even before NIL changed the sport, the SEC was willing to spend for championships.
Dogra recounted a time when he went with an SEC recruit to buy a soda in a dorm. When dropping two quarters into the machine, he explained to the recruit why he didn't offer him a beverage. It was against NCAA violations. The player joked he'd buy Dogra a can.
"I was so naive that later on, that individual ended up becoming a client," Dogra said. "And I said, 'Were you laughing at me?' He goes, 'Yeah.' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Ben, in the Southeastern Conference, we take a pay cut to go to the NFL.'"
Despite Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry's public outrage at Brian Kelly's buyout, Kiffin's new contract shows that the mentality of SEC schools to pay whatever it costs is still very much alive.
For more on the NCAA, head to Newsweek Sports.
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