How Lane Kiffin’s Exit and Other Moves Impact the CFP Field

One of the more persistent talking points in support of a revamped college football postseason before the Playoff debuted in 2014 focused on virtually every other American league ending its season with some kind of tournament.

With the 2025 season’s College Football Playoff just weeks away, the sport offers another reminder that college football has always been different from those other leagues.

Think back a little more than a month to the epic 2025 World Series. Imagine Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider declaring in the last week of September that he’s jumping to the Boston Red Sox, and Don Mattingly suddenly takes over the Jays’ chase of an American League pennant.

Sure, it’s possible, but rare in other sports — so much so that Bo Schembechler’s firing of Bill Frieder for interviewing at Arizona State and Steve Fisher overseeing Michigan’s run to the 1989 national basketball championship is still an oft-cited example.

That was 36 years ago.

In college football, however, monumental coaching changes preceding the postseason are as much of a tradition as rivalry-game trophies and marching bands. Now that the sport has implemented a playoff comparable to those of other leagues, the sheer ridiculousness of college football’s coaching-change season is underscored — and detrimental to the national championship.

Obscured in the long shadow Lane Kiffin’s tempestuous departure from Ole Miss cast this week is the staggering amount of job-hopping set to impact college football’s postseason.

The upcoming conference championship weekend features a variety of intriguing matchups with College Football Playoff implications — and no fewer than three teams jockeying for the national championship tournament are directly impacted.

With UCLA naming Bob Chesney as its head coach, James Madison will face Troy for the Dukes’ first-ever Sun Belt Conference championship, a potential berth in the Playoff, and the looming uncertainty of losing a second leader to the Big Ten in 48 months.

James Madison’s most likely challengers for the Group of Five conference auto-bid into the Playoff are American Athletic Conference championship opponents North Texas and Tulane. The Mean Green are losing coach Eric Morris to Oklahoma State, and Tulane’s Jon Sumrall is on his way to Florida.

It’s not just the conference championship games with seismic shifts that will affect the Playoff. After all, LSU-bound Kiffin has never coached a power-conference team to a conference title game, but his erstwhile Rebels are virtual locks for the 12-team national title tournament.

So between Ole Miss and the Group of Five automatic bid, there’s a minimum of one-sixth of the field trying to compete for a championship while also undergoing a massive change.

Oregon brass has not given any indication to suggest offensive coordinator Will Stein will not be there for the Ducks’ return to the Playoff. But with Stein set to take over for Mark Stoops at Kentucky, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if Oregon faces a “two-weeks notice” situation.

Anyone finishing up at one job before taking another knows that feeling of the proverbial kneeling-out the clock. While that may not strictly apply to Stein, it’s not unprecedented — consider Kiffin’s exit from Alabama before the 2017 national championship game, for example.

No other sport has nearly as much structural change during its season. None undergoes so much upheaval on the precipice of its Playoff.

The logical solution would be to implement a transfer window on coaching changes that begins at the conclusion of the Playoff. However, college football remains tied to the college system — for now, at least — and “silly season” falls within the final weeks of the fall semester transitioning into the start of spring semester.

Universities already make myriad concessions for the sake of football; they couldn’t be asked to make another for the sake of the Playoff’s purity. But as long as postseason-bound teams undergo wholesale facelifts weeks — and even just days — before the tournament, college football’s Playoff will never be directly comparable to the playoffs in other sports.