‘Ended Up Getting Divorced’: Lane Kiffin Opens Up on Rock Bottom Moment With Wife Layla & Kids

The most rebellious among the Rebels is Lane Kiffin. Remember when the Ole Miss head coach kept making a fuss at the NCAA last season over the playoff snub? When the Rebels failed to make it to the first round of the playoff bracket, Kiffin went on to shame the Hoosiers for doing so. He argued vehemently that his team deserved the prize more. Be it the standout offensive skills, outspoken demeanor, and peculiar career decisions, no one can beat the 49-year-old at his game. That’s the ego that he carries. But there is one area that he needed to work on a lot in life: conquering losses on and off the field. Sounds contradictory, right? It’s really easy to relish and romanticize the wins, but taking losses is also a tough lesson that Kiffin has mastered in the hardest way. His divorce and marriage accounted for a good drill.

Losing a game is hard, but losing your marriage for the game? A painful symphony! The term work-life balance was kind of absent from Kiffin’s dictionary a few years back. From 2009 to 2013, during his head coach tenures at USC and Tennessee, Kiffin took his badge as a coach a bit too seriously, so much so that he didn’t care about anything else as long as he was winning. Coach Kiffin started to overshadow the ‘person’ Kiffin behind all the lights, cameras, and flashes. And it eventually took a toll on his relationship with the family.

“I was a head coach at Tennessee and USC, and I was like, that was my higher power. Man, I’m the head coach at USC, and that’s who I am. Not like, oh, I’m a husband, not I’m a father. Like that became my higher power. That was the most important thing to me, and I could feel it.” Lane Kiffin explained how the over-ambition turned into an obsession at one point in his career in the April 16th episode of Theo Von’s podcast. 

Kiffin recounted one specific incident where he was asked by an LA Times reporter about what he wants someday. Rather than thinking along personal lines, the Ole Miss HC went for a college football answer. “A statue like Nick Saban,” he said. That gives you an idea where his head was at the time.

Lane Kiffin met his wife back in 1999. After an intense dating period of a few years, the couple decided to tie the knot through a private wedding in 2004. But after 12 years, the sudden changes in Kiffin’s career designation made room for some drawing-room misunderstandings.

Things turned sour from there, and eventually, they split up in 2016. Thankfully, before it had gotten on their nerves, the coach had realized his part of the mistake. Now, he shares an adorable bond with his kids (Landry, Knox, and Presley). “I ended up getting divorced. No wonder that I end up having a strained relationship with my kids. And then I kind of figured this out later on.” Kiffin started to make up for what went wrong. He said that he gave up on his alcoholism. He started to be sober, both physically and emotionally, spending more time with his firstborn, Landry, and his friends during the holidays.

And that’s how the storyline shifted. From staying at Ole Miss to being close to Landry to being the best crime partner to Presley, Kiffin turned into a father, and not just on pen and paper. “Now, I want to be a really good dad. I want to be a really good boss, a good friend, and a really good neighbor. The other stuff happens with the wins. That’s fine. But I was so focused on that it controlled everything,” Lane Kiffin personified the transition pretty smoothly.

The best thing about this was that the coach had recently reunited with his wife, Layla, as well. Who says broken glasses can’t be fixed? It can; you just have to have the fierce willpower like Kiffin!

Lane Kiffin mends the fences with his wife, Layla 

From the end of 2024, the coach started to post a lot of pictures with his former wife alongside daughter Landry on her birthday. Some hilarious clips showed that the mother-daughter duo crushed dad in some sassy fits. During Christmas in Manhattan Beach, California, the whole family had a lot of fun together. The epic family reunion continued through Layla’s “princess” birthday bash. Some clips have shown that Dad threw a pleasant surprise and then came up with a sweet love note.

The family had spent quality time indulging in a lot of fun indoor games together. They pulled each other’s legs like a perfect home from Disneyland.  Also, before all of these public flaunts, when Presley went to play volleyball at USC, which didn’t have a good history with Lane Kiffin, Layla made the post public. Her husband couldn’t refrain from giving a nod with a thumbs-up. That’s how the fans started to connect the dots.

Finally, after a lot of back and forth, in January 2025, Kiffin and his wife officially reunited. Thanks to their son, Knox, a junior quarterback prospect in the 2028 class, who enrolled at Oxford High and took his mom with him in Mississippi. Landry, Knox, Lane, and Layla will live together going forward. Presley, a current USC volleyball face, might have joined them somewhere in the future. But for now, it’s really relaxing to see the head coach stitching the pieces of his life together.