BREAKING NEWS – Juice Kiffin (Dog) is On His Way to Baton Rouge!
Unbelievable. Juice Kiffin was Lane Kiffin's dog the whole time. Take that haters. Take that Ole Miss.
For anybody unfamiliar with Lane Kiffin Dog Gate, I wrote a whole blog about it on Monday. It borderline qualifies as investigative journalism. Not really. But I did buy a subscription to the Ole Miss message boards. I got a quote from an Ole Miss beat reporter on the status of Juice Kiffin and everything.
For the 99% of you who aren't clicking that link, to sum up the drama, Lane Kiffin got a dog when he moved to Ole Miss. A Yellow Labrador named Juice. Juice Kiffin had his own Twitter account. He was famous for being Lane Kiffin's beloved dog son.
However… when Lane Kiffin left for Baton Rouge, reports came out that Juice wasn't on the plane. Lane Kiffin left his dog behind in Oxford. According to Ole Miss fans, it was common knowledge around Oxford that Juice hadn't actually lived with Lane Kiffin for 2 years. That he lived with his handler who worked for Wildrose Kennels. Which is a nice farm in Oxford where they breed dogs or something. As far as dog breeding places go, Wildrose Kennels seems pretty legit. It seems like a solid place for a dog to live.
But allegedly, Lane Kiffin didn't have time to care for Juice. He essentially pawned him back off on the people of Wildrose for them to take care of. So when Lane left for Baton Rouge, everybody assumed he had left Juice behind for good.
Te whole world jumped down Lane Kiffin's throat. "How could you abandon your dog! You're a horrible person! The Hitler of dog owners!"
But what a development we have today. The OFFICIAL Twitter account of Juice Kiffin (a dog), has announced that Juice will in fact be moving to Baton Rouge with Dad, Brother, and Sister Kiffin.
The way I see it, one of three things happened here:
SCENARIO 1: What is probably by far the most likely scenario, is that Juice Kiffin was no longer living with Lane Kiffin, but Lane Kiffin still had "the rights" to him. He was planning to bring Juice to Baton Rouge all along. Maybe find him a new handler he could live with in the Bayou. The Kiffin's still owned Juice the whole time, but paid Wildrose to take care of him. And considering the way Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss, it makes sense that him and his family would have hopped on a plane to Baton Rouge, and put off worrying about the dog for another day or two. If Juice is safe back home with his Wildrose handler, that honestly seems pretty reasonable. It's still kinda fucked up that the Kiffin family dog wasn't living with the Kiffin's, and was being used as a PR stunt this whole time. But that whole series of events makes enough sense.
SCENARIO 2: Lane Kiffin surrendered Juice back to Wildrose, but Wildrose (being Ole Miss fans) agreed to let the football team continue using him for PR. And when Lane took the LSU job, he really thought he could sneak out of town leave town banging pots and pans like a bunch of nurses are walking home from a COVID shift, and nobody would remember that he ever had a dog in the first place. Lane thought he could simply leave Juice at Wildrose, and get on with his shiny new dogless life at LSU..
But when Juice Kiffin staying in Oxford made national headlines, Lane thought to himself, "Fuck… I have to regain custody of this dog."
Which means he would have had to go back to Wildrose and beg for his dog back. But Wildrose wouldn't just give a dog back to a family who's admittedly unfit for dog ownership. And again, I'm pretty sure the owners of Wildrose are big time Ole Miss people (based on their Twitter account).
What I'm trying to say is… imagine the check Lane Kiffin would have had to cut Wildrose Kennels if he had truly surrendered his dog, and due to negative PR, was forced to beg for his return. I can't think of a worse bargaining position to be in. Lane Kiffin, fresh off a contract that's paying him $13 million a year… Wildrose Kennels has him over a barrel. They have something he desperately needs, they know Lane Kiffin has more money than he knows what to do with, AND they feel scorned as Ole Miss fans. If that's the case, then at bare minimum, Wildrose should have taken him for AT LEAST $1M. Somebody down in Oxford should keep an eye on Wildrose Kennels spending habits for the next year or so.
SCENARIO #3: It's a fake dog. Lane Kiffin bought brand new same age Yellow Labrador who looks identical to Juice Kiffin, and he's trying to pass him off as the same dog. I'm not sure how this would possibly work. I'm sure the Ole Miss fans of Wildrose Kennels would call him out for it in an instant. Unless Lane Kiffin paid them off to keep their mouth shut? Maybe Lane Kiffin despised Juice so much that he couldn't bare the thought of bringing him to Baton Rouge, and would rather pay Wildrose hush money than have to deal with Juice again.
It's hard to say. But as of now, it appears Juice the dog will be joining his absent father Lane in Baton Rouge. I can't wait to see what happens next. That first video of Juice Kiffin meeting Mike The Tiger is gonna hit like crack.