When Florida Atlantic announced Lane Kiffin as the newest head coach of the Owls’ football program, it made perfect sense. In Kiffin, FAU gets more publicity than Howard Schnellenberger and whatever coaches followed him combined. If he wins 10 games, the program becomes attractive to recruits that never even knew the Boca campus existed, and if he bails after two seasons they’ll at least be better off than they were this season. You know, unless he pulls a Tennessee on them.
At FAU, a recently-single Kiffin gets to kick back in South Florida with a no-pressure job. He can ride out of town, win or lose, whenever he wants and no one will blame him because it’s a small school and he’s still, somehow, a high profile coach. Hell, he might even stick around for a while and really make people give a hoot about that program, as he told Sports Illustrated’s Pete Thamel in a very flattering new profile.
“It’s almost like when you don’t have money, you think it’s important,” he says. “And once you have it, you’re like, ‘Was I really happy because I have more money going into the bank? No.’ There’s a reason why people retire and move here. I get to coach football and live here. Howard Schnellenberger said it perfect. When he got this thing going, he said it was football in paradise.”
(How has “Football in Paradise” never been the name of a Kenny Chesney album?)
Money is no issue to Kiffin in this “Unwindulax” phase of his career, though. After all, he took a massive pay cut, because he would have made $2 million next year as OC at Alabama. At FAU, he’s making only $950,000 annually. Heroic. But his money is also out of his control, no matter how much he makes. That’s because his divorce and the damn gub’ment are sucking him dry. Thanks Obama!
He thinks out loud. “Should I tell my joke?”
He can’t help himself, a classic Kiffin trait, and proceeds: “I used to say there’s a constantly daily battle between who can take more of my money between Layla and Obama.”
He continues with a bit of fuzzy math: “I figured it out. I really don’t make any money. I pay around 52% in taxes. Layla gets 34.5% in the divorce, and [agent Jimmy Sexton] gets 3%. I make [about] 9% and I’m living in Tuscaloosa.” (Via SI)
He’s technically living in Tuscaloosa, but as the profile constantly reminds us, he’s buying a South Florida home in the very humble $3-5 million range. As luck would have it, while with the reporter, his realtor took him to a home that was $6.9 million (nice), and he was super bummed because the next houses would never live up to that one.
But then, nothing will beat his Manhattan Beach home. He lived next door to the guys who created Duck Dynasty, even vacationed with them. Then, sadly, he had to sell it… to Vince Vaughn. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he’s the new head coach of the Jags in three years.