Newly hired Louisiana State University coach Lane Kiffin claims that some Ole Miss fans were so mad at him for leaving Mississippi for LSU that they tried to run him off the road.
Kiffin described the incident during his first press conference in Louisiana, but said that he fully understands the “passion.”
“It was very hard, and it was really challenging,” Kiffin said at Tiger Stadium, according to the New York Post. “It’s the passion of the SEC. I understand that. I don’t get emotional with it.”
He added, “Knox and I driving and people trying to run us off the road, man, and the things they said to us.”
He then noted that the passion for LSU fans is just as deep.
“And then we got here [to Baton Rouge], and we had been here for six minutes [and fans are saying], ‘We love you, Coach. You’re the best ever,” he said. “That’s the SEC, I’ve been around long enough to know that, and it’s just the passion of the SEC.”
But none of it upsets him, he insisted.
“I’m not upset at those reactions by fans, by people. I think that people get really upset when you leave somewhere because they feel hurt because you’re doing a really good job,” he said. “They ain’t going to the airport and driving from all over, okay, to say those things and yell those things and try to run you off the road if you were doing bad.”
“So I just look at it as passionate people in the SEC, and then it means they really liked what we were doing there,” he added.
Kiffin announced on social media on Sunday that he was leaving Ole Miss for LSU. But rumors have been swirling around him for months about the likelihood of his leaving Mississippi.
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