Typically, the saying goes, “When one door closes, another one opens” — at least, that is what my parents always told me. In the case of former Ole Miss head football coach Lane Kiffin, it felt like one door opened and he, himself, slammed the other one shut, burned any bridge imaginable and seemingly made it his mission to paint himself as the victim when, in fact, he is not.
Kiffin announced via X that he accepted the LSU head coaching job at 2:03 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 30, after a season-long saga of unknowns and rumors surrounding himself and the program.
Kiffin spent six seasons in Oxford at the helm of a program coming off a four-season-long probation period, during which Ole Miss received postseason bans in 2017 and 2018, along with a reduction in scholarships.
Needless to say, six seasons later, Kiffin had Ole Miss and the Rebel faithful in a very different spot.
But that does not mean he earned the right to exit the way he did. Kiffin left, as he has with almost every other job, in controversy. Let me paint you a picture.
Kiffin has been known to hop from program to program since 2007, when he left USC as offensive coordinator to accept the head coaching job with the then-Oakland Raiders. That stint lasted from August 2007 to January 2008, when he received the head coaching position with the Tennessee Volunteers.
Knoxvillians, like Taylor Swift sings in her hit song “All Too Well,” remember all too well how Kiffin left them: hastily, and seemingly without warning, for the USC head coaching job after only one season with the Volunteer program.
The college football world will never forget “tarmac-gate,” the divorce between Kiffin and USC after four seasons. In his next move, he promptly accepted the Alabama offensive coordinator position under the legendary Nick Saban.
Three years into his role with the Crimson Tide — just before a national championship appearance — Kiffin opted to fill the head coaching vacancy at Florida Atlantic and was unable to coach in that championship game. Kiffin led the Owls to two Conference USA championships in 2017 and 2019 before assuming the reins at Ole Miss.
Now, here we are.
After coaching Ole Miss to its best regular season in program history (11-1, 7-1 SEC), Kiffin is leaving.
This one feels different, though. Oxford and Ole Miss seemingly gave Kiffin everything he could have wanted — an opportunity to coach in the best conference in college football, an NIL collective that was all-in, a passionate fanbase and access to the best recruits in Mississippi and the country.
Still, the former Rebel coach chose LSU in the midst of one of the craziest coaching carousels in recent memory.
Ole Miss is in prime position to appear in and host its first-ever College Football Playoff game. The Rebels came in at No. 6 in this week’s CFP rankings — up one spot since last week, despite speculation that the Rebels might drop following Kiffin’s departure. Ole Miss’ Vice Chancellor for Intercollegiate Athletics, Keith Carter, decided not to let Kiffin finish out the season in Oxford after he accepted the LSU job in favor of promoting then-defensive coordinator Pete Golding.
Some national media outlets pushed the narrative that Kiffin should be allowed to finish what he started in Oxford in pursuit of a national championship, no questions asked.
This would be like if SpongeBob took a job with Plankton at the Chum Bucket but expected Mr. Krabs to let him stay an extra month while working at the rival food chain. One would rightfully assume that SpongeBob would be incentivized to steal the secret formula for the Krabby Patty and bring it to the Chum Bucket.
In his announcement, Kiffin claimed that Ole Miss players had told him they wanted him to stay and coach through the playoffs. From his statement on X:
“I was hoping to complete a historic six-season run with this year’s team by leading Ole Miss through the playoffs, capitalizing on the team’s incredible success and their commitment to finish strong, and investing everything into a playoff run with guardrails in place to protect the program in any areas of concern. My request to do so was denied by Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance.”
The funny thing is, multiple players have taken to X to refute these sentiments.
Ole Miss starting center Brycen Sanders replied to Kiffin’s statement, saying, “I think everyone in that room would disagree.” His teammate Suntarine Perkins shared his thoughts by replying, “That was not the message you said in the meeting room. Everybody that was in there can vouch on this.”
The lies from Kiffin do not stop there, and if one believes history repeats itself, these will not be the last of his fibs. During Kiffin’s introductory press conference in Baton Rouge, La., he recounted his version of his trip to the airport for his flight out of Oxford.
“Call a cop that you know so they’ll help you,” Kiffin said. “Because you personally know them because you are leaving the state. And you gotta turn around, and people are screaming at you, trying to run you off the road. I don’t know what they’re gonna do. And so that affects you.”
It turns out that this anecdote is not true, according to the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. An MDPS spokesperson said that officers reported no instance of vehicles attempting to run Kiffin off the road, according to reporting from Mississippi Today. Mississippi Today also reported that Breck Jones, the public information officer for the Oxford Police Department, told them OPD has not received complaints about the alleged incident.
These lies, coupled with the reported ultimatum Kiffin gave the offensive staff to get on the plane to Baton Rouge, or forfeit any possibility of a job at LSU, alongside a little white lie Kiffin told ESPN’s Marty Smith about how the planes from LSU were not heading to Oxford when, in fact, they were, begs the question: Can anyone trust Kiffin’s recount of how this situation unfolded?
The answer, for many, is no.
But in times like these, with national signing day upon us, the playoffs on the horizon and the transfer portal opening quicker than anyone can say periwinkle, Ole Miss had to act fast, and it did.
During the team meeting on Sunday, Carter addressed the team.
“I’m going to do what’s in the best interest of this institution,” Carter said. “The other thing that I do is, I do things that are in the best interest of our student-athletes. Again, a little tumultuous time over the past few weeks, but when it came right down to it we have someone that is a leader of men that can lead you guys, and that man is Pete Golding.”
This moment was caught on video, and Ole Miss fans got to see pure joy erupt in The Olivia and Archie Manning Athletics Performance Center as a new era of Ole Miss Football officially kicked off. Carter then continued speaking.
“You guys know Pete. He knows this place, his passion is about this place. But also what comes with Pete is galvanization,” Carter said. “We had a meeting earlier with our offensive group and these offensive coaches, they’re going to be here. … And we’re going to go on this run in the CFP, and we’re actually going to get that done.”
I do not know if Golding is the guy who will lead Ole Miss to the promised land. What I do know, though, is that he is the guy who stayed.
Pete Golding is the guy who cared. He is the guy who stood on business, 10 toes down, and put his neck on the line for this program. He is the guy who has fraternities at Ole Miss hanging banners that read, “Pete Fleet 2026,” the guy who had players leaving the Manning Center shouting phrases like, “The Pete Golding Era,” and “It’s Pete time.”
Golding is, like Carter said, the man who has galvanized the Ole Miss locker room and fanbase.
Many, including myself, would argue that Golding has been the main driving force of Ole Miss’ success. Before Golding arrived in Oxford, Lane Kiffin’s teams went 5-5 (2020, COVID-19 year), 10-3 (2021) and 8-5 (2022). Since Golding signed on, Ole Miss has gone 11-2 (2023), 10-3 (2024) and just finished 11-1 this season with at least one more game to go.
Kiffin was also dubbed “The Portal King” during his time in Oxford after his nation-leading transfer portal classes year in and year out. His most famous portal class from 2024 consisted of players like Walter Nolen, Princely Umanmielen, Trey Amos and Chris Paul Jr. — all of whom propelled Ole Miss to having the No. 2 overall defense in the country. Key word: defense.
For those who might be worried Ole Miss will take a step back in recruiting and the transfer portal, rest assured that Golding, perhaps more than Kiffin, has been one of the leading recruiters in the nation.
What may ease Ole Miss fans even more is that during the Ole Miss versus Miami men’s basketball game Tuesday night, when Golding addressed the crowd as the Ole Miss head football coach for the first time, he immediately turned everyone’s attention to the players and not himself.
Amid the Kiffin drama, the vice president of Realtree, Tyler Jordan, a partner of Ole Miss Football, reassured Ole Miss fans on X.
“Let’s now focus on promoting this special group of guys @OleMissFB, before they make a playoff run, since the attention hasn’t been on them for weeks now,” Jordan wrote. “I’m proud of this team, and they’re going to need us all to show up for them in December. We’ll be more than okay.”
What should have been a season about the great players that have helped produce this magical run turned into a poorly produced biopic of “Wicked’s” Wizard of Oz, starring Lane Kiffin — a tale of selfishness, greed and lies.
Kiffin may succeed at LSU. He may bring home the national championships that he never could at Ole Miss. But the simple truth is that he left a team that is currently in the hunt for a national championship. He did this in favor of a program and school that just fired its athletic director, only to promote his deputy athletic director, a school that was just able to appoint a new president after its old one left for Rutgers and a school whose state governor decided to meddle in the program’s operations.
In ESPN’s E60 documentary, “The Many Lives of Lane Kiffin,” the former Ole Miss coach said something that applies so well to what unfolded among him, Ole Miss and LSU.
“I think there’s things in life that you do, that you make mistakes,” Kiffin said. “I call them self-inflicted wounds. Then there’s things, you actually are really trying to go above and beyond to do the right thing, and it just doesn’t work.”
Only time will tell whether this was a self-inflicted wound or not.
Cameron Larkin is a senior journalism major from Brandon, Miss., and the digital editor for The Daily Mississippian.
