Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin publicly spoke about his father Monte on Monday for the first time since the longtime NFL coach’s death on Thursday.
Kiffin made his regularly scheduled appearance at SEC media days in Dallas ahead of his father’s memorial service on Saturday and called his father a “superhero.” He referenced a friend he had from middle school that used the term for his father and remarked how accurate it was.
“He said hero’s not really the right term for him, it’s ‘superhero’ and that’s what he was to the people that he touched,” Lane Kiffin said at the podium on Monday. “He used this term and now I’m using this term in description of him because I feel like there’s very few superheroes, there’s very few great ones that loved everyone and tried to help everyone they came in touch with forever. Whether you were big or small, whoever you were he tried to help.”
Monte died at the age of 84 last week. He worked for decades as an assistant coach for numerous teams in both the college and pro ranks. After he was a defensive assistant for the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2016, Monte had been serving as an assistant and analyst on Lane’s staffs at Florida Atlantic and Ole Miss.
Monte Kiffin is most known for the work he did with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1996-2008. There, his “Tampa 2” defense was the league’s defensive standard as the Bucs won their first Super Bowl at the end of the 2002 season. That Super Bowl came in Jon Gruden’s first season as the Bucs’ head coach — and a big reason for Tampa’s immediate success was because Kiffin stayed on as the team’s defensive coordinator.
After parting ways with Tampa Bay at the end of the 2008 season, Monte Kiffin became the defensive coordinator for Lane at Tennessee in 2009 and moved to USC with his son in 2010. He returned to the NFL for three seasons from 2013-16 before he went back to the college ranks.
In his remarks about his dad on Monday, Lane said that he would share more at his father’s memorial service and wanted to keep his focus on the task at hand while citing his father.
“He never wanted anyone to have a bad day or be sad and this is me trying to do that,” Kiffin said. “I appreciate everything and there’s already been a lot of questions about it — I understand that and I’m appreciative of it — but as he would say, his first rule that he would put on the chalkboard in the back to all players and coaches was to show up. First rule of getting better is to show up, show up and do your job. And that’s what I’m trying to do here.”
