Lane Kiffin’s reputation as an online troll is well-known by college football fans.
From opposing fan bases to reporters and fellow head coaches, few in the college football world have been spared from Kiffin’s sarcastic remarks on the internet over the last 15 years.
That trolling appears to run in the Kiffin family. Kiffin’s son, Knox Kiffin, took a jab at his father’s playing career in an interview when discussing his aspirations as a future college football quarterback.
“He wasn’t good,” Kiffin told Chessa Bouche of Louisiana First News. “He wasn’t very good at all. I’m definitely trying to be better than him. He was a third-string, so I don’t want to do that. I want to be as good as I can.”
Lane Kiffin did not have the most illustrious of college football careers. He was a backup quarterback at Fresno State from 1994-96 and would have left the program entirely in 1997 if his father did not demand he become a student assistant for the Bulldogs.
Knox Kiffin’s status as a recruit
In his sophomore season at Oxford High School, Kiffin threw for 1,236 yards, 14 touchdowns and a pair of interceptions and ran for 167 yards and two more touchdowns. He transferred to University Lab School when his father took the head coaching job at LSU.
Rivals currently ranks Kiffin as the No. 55 quarterback, No. 13 prospect in Louisiana and No. 511 overall prospect in the class of 2028. 247Sports director of scouting Andrew Ivins said that Kiffin’s “camp footage reveals smoother mechanics as he frames up targets” and that he “displays some natural play-making ability and can be creative on the move” in a scouting report from October of 2025.
Where will Knox Kiffin play college football?
Kiffin is already on record stating that he has no desire to play college football for his father, so that rules LSU out.
At this point in his recruitment, Kiffin holds a total of 13 offers, most of which are from Group of Six programs in the FBS ranks. However, three Power Four programs extended offers to Kiffin in his first two years of high school.
SMU offered Kiffin a scholarship while he was attending a camp there in late May of 2024. The Mustangs’ succession plan for Kevin Jennings’s eventual departure features a former four-star prospect in redshirt freshman Ty Hawkins and a 2027 four-star commit in Malachi Zeigler.
Washington offered Kiffin his scholarship in mid-December of 2025. The Huskies are entering their second full season with Demond Williams Jr. as their starter, staving off alleged tampering attempts from a pair of programs in need of quarterbacks in the 2026 portal cycle. Like SMU, Washington holds a commitment from a 2027 four-star quarterback in Blake Roskopf.
California offered Kiffin shortly after Washington and just weeks after parting ways with former head coach Justin Wilcox. The Golden Bears enter their second season with Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele as their starter in 2026 and will hold onto him for another year 2027 barring a decision to transfer. Dane Weber, the top 2027 quarterback in California, committed to the Golden Bears on May 28.
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