Tweet Relief

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BOCA RATON – Regarding his Twitter account, FAU coach Lane Kiffin considered taking the advice of former first lady Michelle Obama, who preached that people should think before they re-tweet.

But that isn’t exactly Kiffin’s style.

“I’m not big on scaling back,” Kiffin said.

Kiffin’s twitter account made national news again this weekend with a tweet suggesting that the Owls purposely took a safety at the end of their 30-25 victory over Marshall to keep the Owls from covering the 6.5 point betting spread.



Enough people took Kiffin seriously that a university spokesperson had to inform the media that Kiffin was, in fact, joking.

“I thought it was pretty funny that people would think a coach would ever do that so I re-tweeted that and really used the opportunity to say something about our players, too – having to give them a well-deserved weekend off.”

Kiffin said the origin of the tweet came to him the way most of his tweets do.

“Most of the stuff that I get, I’m not sitting there scrolling through, usually people send me funny stuff, so I’ve got a lot of people that kind of take pride if they send something and I choose to re-tweet it – whether it’s buddies or other coaches on the staff or people in the office or kids in the office like, Hey coach you should put this up,” Kiffin said.

“Someone sent me that. I had no idea that that safety changed the spread or changed whatever, who wins or who loses.”

When Kiffin tweets, it’s to a large audience. His Twitter account has nearly 270,000 followers. A couple weeks ago Kiffin drew national attention when suggested that Louisville quarterback and reigning Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson should come to FAU – also a joke.

He said the thought process behind his tweets is “not really thought out.”



“It’s literally about, like, five seconds which is probably not good,” Kiffin said. “Someone sends something to me, I think about five seconds before I type something and resend it. It’s probably not good.”

While some media outlets ran stories that took Kiffin’s point spread tweet at face value, and at one point the school’s assertion that Kiffin was only joking was a top story on ESPN.com, Kiffin says all the publicity still benefits the school.

And if his persona, or his 140 characters, has people talking about FAU football, so be it.

“I don’t care how we get it,” Kiffin said. “At the end of the day they’re still saying FAU. That doesn’t bother me . That’s part of it.”