The Loop
Did Lane Kiffin bet his life savings on Marshall Friday night?
Most normal football coaches will tell you they have one thing on their minds throughout the course of a game: win by any means necessary. Lane Kiffin is not a normal football coach.
On Friday night, Kiffin's FAU Owls welcomed in the 6-2 Marshall Thundering Herd for an important game in the Conference USA east division standings. Despite having one less win and sitting at 5-3, FAU closed as a 6.5-point favorite on their home turf, likely because of the fact that the Owls came into the game on a red-hot four-game winning streak.
For most of the night, bettors who laid the 6.5 points and took FAU were riding high, as the Owls never trailed and led 30-23 with under four minutes to play. Marshall had a chance to send it to OT on what appeared to be its final drive, but quarterback Chase Litton threw an interception with 44 seconds remaining, giving the ball to FAU on their own 43-yard line. With timeouts to spare, Marshall was able to stuff the Owls three times and force one more punt, hoping for a miracle block. Those who bet FAU had one bullet left to dodge and OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS WHERE IS THE PUNTER RUNNING:
There's bad beats, and then there's watching a punter scamper to the back of the endzone and get ragdolled into the front row bad beats. Just crushing. After the game, it got much, much worse for FAU bettors, when Lane Kiffin rubbed salt in the wound by acknowledging the point spread on Twitter, something you will rarely, if ever, see a football coach do:
Naturally, everyone immediately wondered if a college football coach just admitted to purposely not covering the point spread. Or a better question, did Lane Kiffin bet his entire life savings on Marshall +6.5? ESPN confirmed on Saturday morning that he in fact, did not, and that Kiffin was just making a joke:
"I did not know the safety changed the result of the spread until last night after I got home. "Someone sent me the funny tweet that I was supposedly trolling everyone by taking a safety to not cover, and as a joke, I retweeted it adding the rat poison line and put a shout-out to our players for earning a well-deserved weekend off. If that's a story, it must be a slow news day. Roll Tide tonight."
Joking about the point spread, taking shots at Alabama and winning football games. Lane Kiffin is BACK baby!