No. 1 on the list took a while to learn, just like all of them: “Your words are more powerful than they’ve ever been.”
Lane Kiffin didn’t grasp that when named the Oakland Raiders’ head coach a decade ago, or even at the University of Tennessee after he was fired by Oakland. But all these years and stops later, in his fourth head coaching job at Florida Atlantic University, he knows what he didn’t know. What he wishes he always knew.
That’s the working idea, anyway, as Kiffin opens his next era Friday night against Navy.