UCLA Football’s disastrous start to the 2025 season ended with the swift firing of head coach DeShaun Foster. Three straight losses — capped by a humiliating 35–10 home defeat to New Mexico — sealed his fate. Foster now finds himself in every ousted coach’s dream job: getting paid to do nothing.
The question in Westwood now is what comes next. Oddsmakers at BetOnline have already released early lines on UCLA’s next full-time head coach. At the top are splashy names like Jon Gruden (4/1) and Deion Sanders (5/1). Scroll down far enough, though, and at 25/1 sits a name that raises eyebrows: Lane Kiffin.
So You’re Sayin’ There’s A Chance: Lane Kiffin Given Longshot Odds To Land At UCLA
Is it a great day to be alive and to be a Bruin?
On the surface, Kiffin to UCLA makes absolutely no sense. He’s entrenched in Oxford, now in his sixth season at Ole Miss, with a record of 44–18 and three double-digit-win campaigns in the last four years. He’s beloved by the Rebels fan base, has his family settled in Mississippi, and according to Paul Finebaum, “he could go 0–12” and still have full job security.
But Kiffin’s career has never exactly been conventional. From USC to Alabama to Florida Atlantic to Ole Miss, his path has been as winding as it is unpredictable. He’s flirted with other openings before — Finebaum went so far as to say that Kiffin “would have taken” the Florida job had Billy Napier been fired last offseason. It didn’t happen, but it underscored how restless Kiffin’s coaching journey can be.
So why even entertain the longshot? Because with Kiffin, the improbable is always on the table.
On one hand, leaving Ole Miss right now feels illogical. The Rebels are positioned as a possible College Football Playoff sleeper, with a schedule that sets them up for early momentum. Kiffin himself has said he “loves it there,” pointing to family ties that make Oxford a comfortable home base.
On the other hand, UCLA offers something Ole Miss never can: a return to Los Angeles, where Kiffin once prowled the sidelines for USC. A shot at resurrecting a major West Coast program starved for national relevance. The chaos of the Big Ten beckons, and it has the financial resources to make a splash if it wants one.
That’s the paradox. Kiffin to UCLA makes no sense because he has stability in the SEC and a roster he believes can contend in 2026. It makes all the sense in the world because this is Lane Kiffin we’re talking about — the same coach who has reinvented himself at nearly every stop, often against the odds.
For now, it’s only a betting line and a thought experiment. Odds are UCLA turns elsewhere, perhaps sticking with an interim until the offseason before making a more realistic hire. But the mere mention of Kiffin — however improbable — captures what this search represents: desperation, possibility, and just enough chaos to make you wonder.