“He was like crying”: Lane Kiffin’s daughter Landry shares wholesome story of how she & friends convinced dad to stay at Ole Miss

Maliha
NCAA Football: Arkansas at Mississippi - Source: Imagn
NCAA Football: Arkansas at Mississippi - Source: Imagn

Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss team has started the 2025 season strong, boasting a 4-0 record after a 45-10 win over Tulane last weekend. What many may not know is that Kiffin nearly left the program in 2022 to join Auburn, but his daughter Landry convinced him to stay.

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This revelation surfaced in the trailer for ESPN’s E:60 documentary, “The Many Lives of Lane Kiffin,” which explores the coach’s on-field achievements and his life as a devoted father.

“I needed Oxford and Ole Miss a lot more than they needed me,” Kiffin said. “But I didn't know. I didn't know God's plan. I didn't know he was going to give me a second chance of being an in-person parent.”
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For her part, Landry shared how she influenced her father’s choice.

“I was like I just moved here, and now you're going to go somewhere else? Landry quipped. “Like I don't want to move somewhere else. Me and my friends, we made this slideshow like collage to a song that we knew he would find sad and like just really rethink his decision.
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“We came into the office and then set it up like a movie projector screen. We were like, ‘We have something to show you, come in here.’ He sat down and we played it, and he was crying. After that, he told us he was going to stay. So, it worked.”

Rebels fans have reason to be grateful to Landry, as Kiffin has led Ole Miss to at least 10 wins in three seasons since taking over in 2020. Under his guidance, the program has also become a magnet for top talent, with eight players drafted in the 2025 NFL Draft alone.

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Landry opens up about the experience with Lane Kiffin’s coaching career

After three seasons and two national championships with Alabama, Lane Kiffin accepted the head coaching role at Florida Atlantic, where he remained until December 2019 before moving on to coach at Ole Miss. His children would visit him in Mississippi, but their time together was brief.

Landry reflected on those moments, recalling how it felt to see her father only occasionally.

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"I feel like I was still a little bit young to fully understand it, but I kind of always just thought of it like, oh, he's just at work,” Landry said (via ESPN).

In 2022, Landry moved to Oxford to live with her father and later enrolled at Ole Miss.

Edited by Maliha
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