It's been a good week amid a good year to be Lane Kiffin.
The Lane Train is hauling much less unneeded freight, down 30 pounds from January. His entire Ole Miss program is vaccinated, as far as we know the only program in the SEC with that claim. Just this morning, Kiffin appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe to encourage vaccinations in the South.
And on Thursday morning the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported Kiffin's new contract is much richer than the one he first signed in December of 2019.
Kiffin will earn $4.5 million this fall, with a $500,000 retention bonus should he remain in Oxford through the end of this calendar year. That vaults him from the second-lowest paid among the SEC's 13 public head coaches into the middle tier with Kentucky's Mark Stoops and Mississippi State's Mike Leach.
He was set to earn $4 million under the terms of his original contract, meaning his 5-5 debut was worth an extra $1 million to Ole Miss brass.
The annual raises are bigger with his new contract, too. The original deal bumped him by $100,000 a year, the new one jumps a quarter million, taking him to $5.75 million by 2024.
Mississippi state law prevents its public employees from being under contract for longer than four years, so there's a good chance this deal doesn't last longer than 12 months, either. The easiest way to see how satisfied Ole Miss is with the Lane Experience is in the total value of his two contracts.
The first deal committed $16.2 million of the school's funds to its new coach. The new deal? $21.5 million, a 33 percent raise.