Praise Ole Miss after Lane Kiffin went about his LSU move in the most Lane Kiffin way possible
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No shot.
If I were Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter, that’s what I would’ve told Lane Kiffin if he told me that he wanted to coach the program in its first ever Playoff berth, but after he had already agreed to become LSU‘s coach. Thankfully for Ole Miss, that’s exactly what Carter did.
Yes, Kiffin is the best coach in program history. Yes, his portal hits and roster construction have Ole Miss enjoying a special season. Yes, Kiffin gives Ole Miss a better chance to win than anybody else on that coaching staff, which is why Kiffin was set to become an 8-figure coach if he stayed in Oxford instead of bolting for Baton Rouge.
But wait, you want to stick around even though you just signed up to become direct intra-conference competition with the ability to poach that entire roster and coaching staff?
No shot.
Praise Ole Miss and roll your eyes at Kiffin. Roll your eyes at a coach who vowed he was in a different place spiritually, only to record his 5th messy breakup since he entered the national spotlight nearly 2 decades ago.
It’s not that Kiffin left Ole Miss. We can debate the upside of that move and whether he made a mistake about leaving a place where he was closer to statue territory than roughly 99% of current college football coaches.
What cannot be debated is how baffling it is that Kiffin thought he’d be able to coach Ole Miss through the Playoff
Kiffin couldn’t handle Alabama OC duties in the 2016 College Football Playoff after taking the FAU job, which was why he was given an early exit by Nick Saban. How on earth could Kiffin assume that he could handle game-planning for the Playoff while trying to rebuild LSU over the next month? This wasn’t Scott Frost staying on at UCF to coach in the Peach Bowl before leaving for Nebraska, nor was it Jon Sumrall staying at Tulane to coach in a conference title game before leaving for Florida, who missed out on the Kiffin sweepstakes.
Those programs aren’t competing for the same thing. In theory, LSU and Ole Miss are competing for the same thing. Kiffin leaving Playoff-bound Ole Miss for LSU would suggest that he doesn’t feel that’s the case. Just as we saw with Brian Kelly when he left a potentially-Playoff bound Notre Dame team for LSU at the end of the 2021 season, that move doesn’t happen without titles in mind. Not for a coach who was set to make tens of millions of dollars on a new contract if he stayed.
Kiffin had alignment, and he had a Playoff-bound team. Ole Miss gave him everything he asked for, perhaps with the exception of a student section that showed up early for 11 a.m. kickoffs.
(The irony is that an 11 a.m. kickoff in Baton Rouge is historically the ultimate “please show up, fans” game for the LSU head coach.)
Ole Miss kept a historically successful coach for 6 years, which was about 3-4 years longer than many assumed would be the case when Kiffin took the job in Dec. 2019. He needed Ole Miss more than Ole Miss needed him, he repeatedly said. The program was eventually able to retain its staff with moves like fending off Florida for OC Charlie Weis Jr., and before the 2025 season, Ole Miss gave Pete Golding a 3-year contract that made him one of the 4 highest-paid defensive coordinators in the sport.
Speaking of Golding, he’ll now get the task of being a head coach for the first time. As for what sort of offensive staff he’ll have to work with, well, let’s wait and see what that looks like after Kiffin tries to bring Ole Miss’ staff to LSU like he’s Michael Scott when he started “The Michael Scott Paper Company.”
Ole Miss losing staffers wouldn’t be an indictment of the program because it currently has bigger things on its mind with Golding.
That is, playing in a Playoff game for the first time. You know, the thing that Kiffin didn’t realize he’d be sacrificing when he agreed to become LSU’s next coach.
Or for all I know, maybe Kiffin did know that was going to be nearly impossible, but he still tried to talk Carter into letting him stick around to try and get some Playoff glory.
Kiffin clearly wanted 1 more send-off in Oxford before moving on to the bigger — and in his eyes — better job
Good for Ole Miss for not allowing it. Plenty of others probably would’ve and instead looked like the unpopular kid who was just grateful to have gotten to take a cheerleader to prom.
Nah. Don’t let someone become bigger than the program. Kiffin coaching Ole Miss in the Playoff would’ve been that.
Instead, Kiffin will have to watch Ole Miss on that stage without him. Even if Ole Miss is 1-and-done in the Playoff, it should forever eat at Kiffin that he went about this the way that he did. Maybe he’ll finally say all the right things and indicate that LSU was the only job he would’ve ever left for. Coming from the same guy who said that USC was the only job he would’ve left Tennessee for, um, that’d fall a touch flat.
What this turned into was a spectacle. If Kiffin was truly set on leaving, he should’ve understood what this meant for his Playoff aspirations at Ole Miss. It didn’t have to be like this. Another messy breakup certainly wasn’t what Kiffin envisioned for his Ole Miss sendoff, but it’s absolutely what he got. Will that be forgotten when Kiffin makes his return to Oxford for the LSU-Ole Miss matchup next year?
No shot.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
