Paul Finebaum has been in the college football media for quite some time, so you can imagine he’s had his share of tense moments. The ESPN personality was asked on the Dan Patrick Show about his most awkward encounter in his college football media career.

Without hesitation, Finebaum revealed it was with Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin back when Kiffin was at USC in 2013.

It appears Finebaum might’ve played a role in the famous tarmac firing for Kiffin.

“I was on College GameDay in 2013 before they played Arizona and I said if USC can’t win tonight, Lane Kiffin should be fired. Well, guess what? They didn’t win and he was fired,” Finebaum said. “The next morning on SportsCenter they pretty much blamed me for the firing. I said he was the Miley Cyrus of college football.”

Finebaum then had to face the newly fired Kiffin soon after, but it turns out the story had a positive ending.

“So two weeks later I’m out at the University of Washington for GameDay and I find out a couple hours before that Lane Kiffin was going to give his first interview. I walk in the meeting and there’s Lane Kiffin. I was a little bit cautious. I just decided, screw it, I’m going to walk over to him. I don’t know whether he was going to throw a punch, not that I was overly concerned of getting punched by Lane Kiffin. I said hello. We ended up becoming fast friends. We started corresponding. He sent me a Miley Cyrus song the next day.”

Hilarious stuff. Kudos to Kiffin for having a sense of humor during a dark time in his life.

Kiffin’s journey finally brought him back to being a Power 5 head coach when he took the job at Ole Miss this season. Ole Miss is 4-4 overall. Their game this weekend vs. Texas A&M was postponed due to COVID-19 concerns within the Rebels’ program. Ole Miss’ next scheduled game is at LSU on Dec. 19.