Lane Kiffin can't have it both ways: Either own the ugly Ole Miss exit, or stop trying to rewrite history

Lane Kiffin has been through so many lifetimes in college football and tried on so many different versions of himself that sometimes you wonder if he gets confused about which character he's supposed to play.

When Kiffin left Ole Miss last December for LSU , sacrificing a viable chance to win last year's national championship in the process, he did it for a defensible reason. Though everything about the timing and execution was terrible, there was nothing controversial about the belief he'd have a better chance of consistently contending for titles at LSU.

Kiffin held a news conference in Baton Rouge on Monday to kick off the week all of college football has been waiting for since he changed jobs. Though the game itself is among the best all year, with real College Football Playoff implications for both teams, the real intrigue is in everything around the game: Stuff like his relationship with the players who stayed at Ole Miss and an administration there that now feels conned by him, whether the atmosphere in Oxford is so toxic that it becomes dangerous and whether he would dare show up to his favorite hot yoga studio on Saturday morning.

But Kiffin is a case study in contradictions — well, either that or chronic phoniness. And with one obviously scripted comment Monday, he called into question the entire premise of why he left Ole Miss for the Bayou in the first place.

"I told the players today, man, you don't have anything to worry about as far as like attention on you all week. There's going to be so much attention and hatred and everything on me, I said, you just get to go play. Really, the pressure's on them. We won seven games last year, they won 13. They return two Heisman candidates. How often does that ever happen in the same backfield? We had it one time [at Southern Cal] with Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush . So you guys get to go play. The pressure's not on you."

If there is one thing we know for sure about why Kiffin left Ole Miss, it wasn't to be the underdog. Not in this game, not in any game.

Kiffin went to LSU to build the SEC's most feared and hated program, to work with an administration that does not care about personal accountability or competitive comity, to break norms and melt his competitors' brains over his willingness to operate in gray areas without a shred of regret.

He went there, not just to win, but to dominate — backed by a governor's mansion that sees him as a vehicle for its political ambitions and enabled by a university administration that would rather jump in Mike the Tiger's cage than tell their football coach no.

And now, on the eve of a game where he can show the world why going to LSU was the no-brainer move he believed it to be, here was Kiffin trying to play philosophy professor rather than the stone-cold killer LSU thought it paid $13 million a year for.

"In games, there's a winner and a loser, but sometimes in decisions and things that go on, there's not always a winner and a loser," he said. "They've been playing this matchup for a long time and this is the first time in the last 64 years both teams are in the top 10 … I think it's a really good thing that a lot of people could look at it and say, hey, both sides are doing really well and both sides won."

If Kiffin wants to be seen as anything other than a cartoon villain, he needs to get his story straight.

He wants so badly to be talked about as this longshot story who overcame doubts and setbacks, when in reality he was born into football privilege and got head coaching jobs at two blue-blood programs and the Oakland Raiders by the time he was 35 years old.

He wants to be viewed as the counterculture guy running afoul of the establishment when, in fact, nobody in college football history has been given more chances at great jobs despite massive amounts of self-sabotage.

He built a social media presence on being edgy and cool when, in person, he is awkward and introverted.

He has left a trail of burnt bridges everywhere he's been, but when it's time to account for it publicly, Kiffin always runs from the smoke.

What is real and what is fake with Lane? Depends whether he's coaching for or against you. Because Ole Miss doesn't get a pass, either. They aided and abetted all of it for six years and were ready to bend over backward for six more — until they realized Kiffin wasn't deciding whether to leave but rather just stalling for time before trying to take everything with him that wasn't nailed down.

The idea that "both sides won" is laughable gaslighting. It only turned out that way because Ole Miss refused to let Kiffin get everything he wanted.

And, hey, that's fine. College football is a brutal business. Kiffin made a decision to work for another school, which was his right, and tried to recruit all the best players at Ole Miss to join him — some of which did and some of which didn't. All of it was fair game.

It should work out pretty well for both sides this year, but only because Kiffin couldn't take QB Trinidad Chambliss and RB Kewan Lacy to Baton Rouge with him. But the idea that Kiffin was happy to settle for a "win-win" divorce is laughable because it simply isn't true.

Trying to pretend like it's all good now, five days before the game, would be like Kiffin dying his blond hair black and telling us we're the crazy ones for noticing.

People can accept that Kiffin did kind of a scummy thing by abandoning Ole Miss before the CFP. It's his life, his career and he's the one who will have to live with those regrets. College sports has forgiven coaches for much worse.

But what nobody should accept are his attempts to rewrite history, by offering reasons for leaving that he knows are bogus (like this summer's GQ article where he mentioned the dark history associated with Ole Miss) and trying to Eddie Haskell his way through this week as the protagonist in his own redemption story.

We all know who you are, Lane. On the eve of the biggest game you've ever coached — tactically fascinating, unusually relevant to the national championship picture and deeply personal for many players and coaches on both sides — just be that guy without the ill-fitting costume you tried to wear Monday.

Put on the black hat once and for all and own it. If not, what was the point of going to LSU in the first place?