Lane Kiffin, the top candidate of the 2025 college football coaching carousel, has made it clear he intends to become the next coach at LSU, according to Yahoo Sports. Kiffin will leave Ole Miss after six seasons and a 55-19 record. It’s unlikely that Kiffin will coach Ole Miss during its College Football Playoff run, and the expectation is that defensive coordinator Pete Golding will be named interim coach, sources told CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz.
A decision was expected on Saturday by Kiffin after he met with athletic director Keith Carter and university administration, but both parties left the meeting without a public resolution. A team meeting was called at 9 a.m. local time on Sunday but was later pushed to 1 p.m. According to Yahoo, the delay means that Kiffin may not even be in attendance for the meeting before leaving.
The primary issue at play is whether Kiffin will be allowed by Ole Miss to coach in the College Football Playoff. The Rebels do not want Kiffin to stay around the program if he is set to leave for LSU, but Kiffin is trying to pressure Ole Miss by forcing offensive assistants to leave early for Baton Rouge and not stay to coach a home playoff game. No public resolution has been reached at this time.
One of the highest-profile coaches in college football since joining the Rebels in 2020, Kiffin led the program to four 10-win seasons and three finishes of No. 11 or better in the AP Top 25. His tenure marked the most successful period at Ole Miss since integration.
However, at LSU, Kiffin has the chance to elevate his resume. Three of the last four coaches in Baton Rouge have won national titles, which have been elusive to Kiffin. Additionally, Brian Kelly won an SEC West division championship in 2022 before the league moved to a divisionless format.
Kelly was fired in only his fourth season after the program invested heavily in his roster. The Tigers limped out to a 5-3 start, including a 49-25 decimation at the hands of Texas A&M. Kiffin defeated Kelly 24-19 in what appeared to be a marquee matchup in Oxford, Mississippi, but the Tigers ultimately fell from No. 4 to unranked.
While Kiffin is one of the most well-traveled coaches in college football, he has never coached in the state of Louisiana. However, he worked under former Tigers coach Nick Saban at Alabama, as well as Pete Carroll at LSU. Kiffin has previous stints as head coach at Tennessee (2009), USC (2010-13) and with the Oakland Raiders (2007-08).
At LSU, Kiffin is tasked with bringing the Tigers back to national contention. The program has not won a national championship or SEC championship since firing coach Ed Orgeron after the 2020 season.
What’s next for Ole Miss?
The timing of Kiffin’s decision really couldn’t be worse for the Rebels, who secured the program’s first College Football Playoff appearance on Friday after a 38-19 win over rival Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl.
Recent reports have suggested Ole Miss could elevate either quarterbacks coach Joe Judge or defensive coordinator Pete Golding to interim coach in the wake of Kiffin’s departure. Judge has a discernible edge in head coaching experience.
A former longtime assistant at the NFL level, Judge coached the New York Giants from 2020-21. He was fired after leading the Giants to a 4-13 record in 2021 which, at the time, set a franchise record for most losses in a single season.
Judge does lack in legitimate college coaching experience, however. This season marks his first as a full-time assistant at the FBS level, though he played quarterback at Mississippi State and served as a special teams analyst at Alabama from 2009-11.
Golding, meanwhile, has exclusively coached at the collegiate level. He got his first big break as the defensive coordinator and cornerbacks coach at UTSA and parlayed that into an opportunity as defensive coordinator at Alabama from 2018-22, where he coached under Nick Saban.
Golding left for Ole Miss in January 2023. In August, Ole Miss made Golding the highest-paid defensive coordinator in the SEC with a three-year contract extension worth around $2.61 million annually.
How does leaving now affect Kiffin’s legacy?
On one hand, Ole Miss fans should be thankful for Kiffin’s time in Oxford. He’s delivered some of the greatest seasons in program history and singlehandedly improved the Rebels’ SEC outlook. To even have Ole Miss in the conversation as a consistent national contender in the modern era is a testament to Kiffin’s efforts.
Ole Miss fans also have every right to be outraged. A coach abandoning a school for a perceived better opportunity stings, but it isn’t unheard of; a coach abandoning a school on the precipice of its first College Football Playoff run is unprecedented, however, and it smacks of betrayal.
It’s reminiscent of the time, just under 16 years ago, when Kiffin suddenly left Tennessee in the cold after one season with the Vols to replace Pete Carroll at USC. Kiffin’s decision precipitated Tennessee’s fall into a decade of irrelevancy.
There’s no telling if the same thing will happen at Ole Miss, but this move is arguably worse from the onset. Kiffin gave the Rebels six seasons, the longest he’s ever stayed in one place as a coach. He took the program to heights it hasn’t seen since Johnny Vaught was patrolling the sidelines.
In an era where sustained success is harder than ever, Kiffin more than acclimated — he thrived and molded Ole Miss into the model of a bought-in program. Now, he could use some of those same tactics to take Ole Miss’ stars with him to Baton Rouge, which would plunge the dagger even further.
The offseason campaign pointing towards Kiffin’s growth — professionally, at least — rings hollow. It’s fair to question whether he’s motivated by anything except the almighty dollar, since winning and resources obviously weren’t issues at Ole Miss.
What will Kiffin inherit at LSU?
Kiffin is inheriting an LSU roster that could look a lot different next year. The Tigers went all-in on building a roster meant to compete for championships in the offseason, which meant adding a lot of veterans via the transfer portal while investing significant capital into retaining top talent.
LSU has 18 seniors or draft-eligible juniors/redshirt sophomores listed atop its depth chart. That includes standout names like quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, cornerback Mansoor Delane and safety A.J. Haulcy. Maybe Kiffin can convince a few of LSU’s impact players with eligibility to come back, but there’s still going to be plenty of turnover.
Not that that’s necessarily a problem for Kiffin, who touts the well-earned moniker of “Portal King.” Flipping rosters isn’t anything new to him; Kiffin leaned heavily on the transfer portal to inject Ole Miss’ roster with talent on a yearly basis.
The Rebels landed a top-five transfer class in every cycle between 2022 — when 247Sports started ranking transfer hauls — and 2025. Expect much of the same at a place like LSU, which hasn’t shied away from talent acquisition in recent years.
Add Comment