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O’Gara: Lane Kiffin, you want to be taken seriously? Go win a game like this in Death Valley at night
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Let’s get real for a second.
In Year 5, Lane Kiffin is arguably the best coach in Ole Miss history, certainly the best not named John Vaught. The man became the first Ole Miss coach to win 10 regular-season games, and then 2 years later, he led the program to its first 11-win season in program history. He earned Ole Miss its best preseason ranking since the Richard Nixon administration at an ideal time because of the expansion of the 12-team Playoff era.
Kiffin cracks the short list of any ranking of the best offensive minds in the sport. You don’t produce 5 consecutive top-30 scoring offenses (4 at Ole Miss, 1 at FAU) by accident, and favorable first-half schedule or not, averaging 44 points per game is nothing to scoff at. Combine that with the fact that Ole Miss’ portal-heavy defensive line somehow exceeded expectations in the first half of the season and yeah, there’s still a world in which Ole Miss makes its first Playoff appearance.
But if we’re being real, the stakes of Saturday night are monumental for Kiffin and Co.
Saturday night at LSU is Kiffin’s biggest game since he got left on a tarmac in the middle of the 2013 season at USC. Why? Well, it has potential to be Kiffin’s most important win since he took over at Ole Miss because anything but a victory at LSU on Saturday night and Ole Miss’ Playoff window might just slam shut.
Yes, I know that a 10-2 Ole Miss team would still make the field. But a 1-2 start to SEC play would essentially mean that Ole Miss would have to run the table with this remaining schedule:
- vs. No. 18 Oklahoma
- at Arkansas
- vs. No. 5 Georgia
- at Florida
- vs. Mississippi State
I see 4 games that a team with a 1-2 mark in conference play could lose. That’s the issue. Trips to Arkansas and Florida look more challenging than they did as recently as a couple of weeks ago, and while Georgia might not be as invincible as the previous 3 years, that’s still a hurdle that Kiffin has yet to clear.
Kiffin cleared the LSU hurdle back in 2021, and last year’s track meet saw Ole Miss hold on after both teams combined for 1,343 yards of offense. That game also marked Kiffin’s first victory against a Power 5 team that won 9 regular season games since he led USC to an upset at No. 4 Oregon in 2011. The Peach Bowl victory against Penn State gave Kiffin 2 such victories in 2023 alone.
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To make the Playoff, even in the expanded field, Kiffin will likely be tasked with again beating multiple Power 5 (now I call it the “Core 4”) teams that win at least 9 regular-season games. In 2024, LSU could definitely be 1 of those matchups, especially with how well Garrett Nussmeier has looked. It’s the toughest matchup to date for the loaded Ole Miss defense, which ranks in the top 3 in FBS in scoring defense, yards/play allowed, opposing 3rd-down conversion percentage, yards/rush allowed, rushing yards/game allowed, tackles for loss and sacks.
If that unit is the deciding factor by night’s end, Kiffin will deserve praise. After all, Walter Nolen (Texas A&M), JJ Pegues (Auburn), Jared Ivey (Georgia Tech), Princely Umanmielen (Florida) and Chris Paul Jr. (Arkansas) are all former transfers who were major acquisitions by Kiffin, AKA “The Portal King.”
Seeing Ole Miss as a whole flourish in a hostile atmosphere would be somewhat unprecedented in the Kiffin era. Here are Ole Miss’ road games vs. AP Top 25 teams since he arrived in 2020:
- 2021 at No. 1 Alabama: L, 42-21
- 2021 at No. 18 Auburn: L, 31-20
- 2023 at No. 24 Tulane: W, 37-20
- 2023 at No. 13 Alabama: L, 24-10
- 2023 at No. 1 Georgia: L, 52-17
Including Kiffin’s time at Tennessee (0-2), USC (2-3) and FAU (0-4), he’s 3-13 in true road games against AP Top 25 teams in his 12.5 seasons as a head coach. And 2 of those wins were at No. 24 Tulane last year — a game that Ole Miss held a 3-point lead with 4:30 remaining against a Group of 5 team with a backup QB — and a 24-21 win at No. 18 Arizona, who finished with 6 losses in 2010.
So yes, you could argue that beating LSU on Saturday would be Kiffin’s most impressive win since that aforementioned win at No. 4 Oregon in 2011. That game stalled Oregon’s path to a national title and it set the stage for USC to enter the following season as the preseason No. 1 team in the AP Poll. But you could argue that USC was playing with a bit of house money at the time of the matchup because it had already suffered that second loss and was out of national title contention.
That’s not the case on Saturday night in Death Valley. All of that is still on the table for Ole Miss — who is a slight favorite to get past LSU — even after the home loss as a 2-touchdown favorite against Kentucky to start SEC play. Kiffin has an opportunity to move past some of that embarrassment and do something that nobody has done since Brian Kelly arrived at LSU.
That is, hand the Tigers a loss in a night game in Death Valley.
Do that, and you’ve earned the college football world’s attention. Come up short, and that’s on the back burner until further notice.
Those are the stakes for Kiffin. If he’s really ready for the big time, he’ll win a game like this.
If not, things will get real in a hurry for a team that could watch its Playoff dreams all but die a painful death in Death Valley.
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.
