Kiffin was the youngest head coach in modern NFL history, getting the Raiders job at age 31 in 2007. It, uh, didn’t go well.
In fact, Kiffin’s early coaching career is notable for the burning wreckage of programs left in his wake. His exits from Oakland, Tennessee, and USC were all spectacular theater, leaving behind rivers of bad blood.
Things came to a head when Kiffin was pulled from the team plane to be fired on the airport tarmac, then left behind without a ride. Somehow, Kiffin came off poorly in this scenario. I think it says everything about a guy’s popularity that he could be ignobly fired on an airport runway and still be widely viewed as the bad guy.