Regardless of his football nous, Kiffin knows the modern sports world is a dysfunctional arena where clicks and eyeballs are considered currency

Louisiana State University head coach Lane Kiffin sauntered slowly down Victory Hill on the traditional prematch walk into Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge last Saturday, wearing shades, a white hoodie, and $700 Golden Goose runners. Cool, calm and connected, he was flanked by Angel Reese, arguably the best player in the WNBA, Paul Skenes, one of baseball’s finest pitchers, the gargantuan in every way Shaquille O’Neal, and raising the age profile, Kevin Costner.

With a supporting cast of undeniable celebrity wattage, Kiffin slapped the outstretched hands of fans, luxuriating in the attention and adulation. As he is wont to do.

The choreographed ring walk entrance pantomime, showing off three of the most famous LSU alumni and a Hollywood icon to the television cameras, looked rather foolish three hours later after the University of Alabama had trounced his team 31-13. A result seriously jeopardising their hopes of reaching the college football play-offs this season. A result causing much mirth and Schadenfreude across America especially because, some months back, Kiffin painted the away locker room at Death Valley (as the stadium is sometimes called) a garish pink in order to make the visiting players less aggressive and intense. No, seriously.

The pseudo-psychology of colour schemes is just the latest bunkum to be peddled by a man permanently bent on proving he’s the smartest, suavest guy in the sport. To be fair, he has somehow convinced enough people of his greatness for LSU to have lured him away from Ole Miss last season on a salary of $91 million over seven years.

Not only that. They gave him a budget of $40 million to get some of the finest talent in the college game to transfer from other institutions to play for him. Then, on a campus where between 350 and 450 students visit the food pantry for sustenance each day, authorities found another $25 million to underwrite the wages of his handpicked all-star coaching staff.

The only thing America relishes more than a hero is an anti-hero fully committed to the bit. Kiffin has turned playing the heel into such an art form that a record 900 press credentials were issued for his home debut against Clemson University earlier this season. For the pregame ritual walk that day, he was joined by manosphere bilge pump Theo Vonn, swimsuit model Brooks Nader, and gymnast-turned-actress Livvy Dunne. Whether or not, as his supporters contend, Kiffin possesses a great football mind, he’s certainly savvy enough to know the modern sports world is a dysfunctional arena where clicks and eyeballs are regarded as currency by too many in power.

He drew plenty of both when he spent part of preseason trolling rivals by trying to exploit a legal grey area so he could draft former NFL players into his squad. Writs flew, there were threats to expel LSU from the competition altogether, and Paul Finebaum, the doyen of college football journalists, described him as “a 51-year-old man behaving like a 16-year-old”.

Conveniently enough for somebody carefully cultivating a knavish persona, freshly accused of printing up fake quotes from opponents to motivate his squad, the rather unsporting half-time speech he gave his players as they led Clemson 31-3 was then leaked to the media.

“And don’t think we’re letting up late,” roared Kiffin.” No matter if you’re in the game for one more snap or 50 more snaps, you f**king take it out on them. The whole f**king world hates you. So you get a chance to show the whole world, ‘Go f**k yourself.’”

With his father Monte, a legendary defensive coordinator in the NFL, Kiffin began working on the sidelines after his playing career topped out as a backup quarterback at Fresno State University in the mid-1990s. Evincing enough early promise for the then Oakland Raiders to make him their youngest coach ever at just 31, he was gone after one calamitous NFL campaign with owner Al Davis denouncing him as “a flat-out liar”.

Promising far more than he delivered was to become a recurring theme through stops at Tennessee, where he loved jogging shirtless across campus while students walked to class, USC, Alabama (serving time as an assistant to the great Nick Saban), Ole Miss and, farther off the beaten track, Florida Atlantic.

Some of those teams were fleetingly more successful than others, none managed to win a national championship with him as head coach, and most were undone at crucial moments by his own boneheaded play-calling, Although five years sober now, everywhere he worked also thrummed with yarns about him hanging around college bars drunkenly passing himself off as a louche character named Joey Freshwater, and his departures have always tended toward the soap operatic, usually coming franked with acrimony.

USC walked him off the tarmac and fired him in a Los Angeles airport terminal on the way back from shipping 62 points in a loss to Arizona State. Ole Miss fans once hired a private plane to fly over Vaught-Hemingway Stadium pulling a banner that read, “Coach Lame Sucks!” And when he left the University of Tennessee, an alumnus filed paperwork petitioning the city of Knoxville to name a water treatment facility “The Lane Kiffin Sewage Centre”.

“If you want to win at the highest level,” declares a poster Kiffin has hung throughout the LSU training facility, “you have to become a villain in someone else’s story.”

Nobody does that bit better.