Good is the enemy of great for Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss
By David Wasson
Published:
Lane Kiffin has a problem.
It isn’t his brash ego or his ever-increasing social media reliance, as those could and are considered assets in many circles – and very much make Lane Kiffin who he is. It isn’t the seeming need to aura farm and play the court jester and seemingly nod/wink his way through life – that, too, is Kiffin’s baked-in personality.
But the beloved/bedeviled Ole Miss coach definitely has a problem, and it is showing itself more and more with each passing week.
Kiffin’s problem? He keeps bumping his head on the ceiling that separates good from great.
Take a breath, Rebels fans. This isn’t a “Bash Ole Miss” column. On the contrary, the job Kiffin has done in Oxford in his 5+ years there is nothing short of remarkable. Throw out his pandemic-shortened first season, and Kiffin is averaging 10 wins a season – all the while doing it with a NIL budget dwarfed by the big boys in the SEC.
But that’s the problem with Kiffin. Hitting the double-digit mark is elite… for Ole Miss standards. We are talking a program that hasn’t won an SEC championship since the Kennedy administration, and one that likely won’t again unless an unlikely and unforeseen confluence of events strikes the rest of the SEC.
That’s because even winning 73.1% of your games the way Kiffin has – the best winning percentage by an Ole Miss coach not named Johnny Vaught in the last 2 centuries – simply can’t get it done with the cream of the SEC crop.
And at the risk of revisiting the earlier existentialism: If good is the enemy of great, the Ole Miss version of Kiffin is the enemy of any future version of Kiffin.
The last time Ole Miss was remotely as good as the Rebels are now, the NCAA practically set up a field office in Oxford to monitor Hugh Freeze before he self-detonated via the use of a university-owned cellphone. But by the sheer combined force of clever recruiting, relentless self-promotion and Saban-refined coaching talent, Kiffin has burnished both the Rebels’ brand and his own to the point where his electorate doesn’t go spontaneously tachycardial when they see their team in the Top 5.
That’s a fancy way of saying Ole Miss fans expect the success they’re seeing right now from Kiffin’s Rebels. That also means that increased expectations are literally right around the proverbial corner – which is why we are gathered here today in the first place.
Kiffin is thumping his sandy blond melon against the underside of the SEC’s glass ceiling so hard it is leaving unsightly bruises visible even during sunrise hot yoga classes. Ole Miss can’t get much better than Ole Miss is right now because, well, that isn’t how the world works.
Said world was a different place – literally – when Vaught had ‘em rolling from 1959-62. For starters, 3 of those teams only won a share of a national championship: the 1959, 1960 and 1962 Rebels. The NCAA only recognizes the 1960 team that finished 10-0-1, and that was a shared title in the NCAA’s eyes with Minnesota (who lost in the Rose Bowl after the polls were released, while Ole Miss won the Sugar Bowl).
Even then, Ole Miss was looking up at Alabama and Coach Bryant’s early legacy – as the Crimson Tide captured shares the 1961, 1964 and 1965 titles before the AP and UPI finally wised up and voted after the bowl games were complete. And 60 years later? The nexus of NIL riches, football complex investments that make Vegas resorts blush and packed 100,000-seat stadiums has given the SEC’s elite a huge head start on the likes of Ole Miss.
That hypothesis can’t be proven by math but is gleaned via observation of Kiffin’s most recent teams. For example, Kiffin’s 2021 Rebels were very strong but lost to No. 1 Alabama and No. 18 Auburn. In 2023, Ole Miss dropped games to No. 13 Alabama and No. 2 Georgia. Last season, it was unranked Kentucky, No. 13 LSU and unranked Florida. And just last week, it was No. 9 Georgia.
Those were Kiffin’s 3 strongest Rebels teams – all 3 on the cusp of becoming bona fide national contenders but falling just short of the promised land. Losing to the Bulldogs wasn’t a death knell for 2025, per se, but there’s no reason to believe a more unsightly defeat isn’t lurking out there in the remaining schedule to torpedo this team’s shot at the College Football Playoff.
Which leads back to the point: Lane Kiffin having a problem. If he is content on being a really good coach, X-dominating fellow SEC coaches and convincing all the talent he can to Come To The Sip, then Oxford is the place. But if Kiffin wants to slay the enemy of great and go chase national championships, well, Oxford probably ain’t it.
Is Florida the place? Perhaps. Somewhere else in this already-insane coaching carousel cycle? Who knows. The perfect job in the perfect place doesn’t just appear on a silver platter, but instead is one that has all the tools and resources to be perfect while – like a well-worn baseball mitt – it molds itself around you and you become one with it.
Sadly, that place isn’t Oxford, Mississippi. The natural order of things has ordained that fact since before the prominence of color television. For Kiffin to win the truly Big Enchilada, he must move on.
That, dear reader, is Lane Kiffin’s problem – and it is one only he can solve.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
