Ole Miss will learn its first-round College Football Playoff matchup on Sunday while former coach Lane Kiffin watches on from Baton Rouge.
Kiffin, now the coach at LSU, wanted to stay with the Rebels through the CFP run before completely departing, but Ole Miss informed him that wouldn’t be an option and is moving forward with former defensive coordinator Pete Golding as its new head coach — not just in the interim but long-term.
Inside the weeks of turmoil that drove Lane Kiffin from Ole Miss to LSU — with a hard pass on Florida
John Talty
Kiffin offered some frustrated complaints about that decision by Ole Miss on his way out the door, first in his letter announcing he was going to LSU and then later in his opening press conference in Baton Rouge. Kiffin claimed the players wanted him to coach the team in the playoff and that he didn’t find out until Sunday morning (the day he went public with his decision) that he wouldn’t be permitted to do so.
Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter, during a Wednesday interview with Supertalk Mississippi, offered a calm, but searing rebuttal of Kiffin’s recent run of comments. Carter said Kiffin was made aware “several weeks ago” that he would not be able to coach Ole Miss in the postseason if he accepted another job.
“Yeah, there’s been a lot of things he’s said publicly that I’m not sure are totally accurate,” Carter said with a smirk. “I think that both coach and his representation knew several weeks ago that coaching in the playoffs was not gonna be an option if he was not the Ole Miss head coach.”
Kiffin claimed he was not made aware that he would not be allowed to coach in the playoff until 8:30 Sunday morning. Carter offered another version of events.
“No, that’s not accurate. That’s not accurate. The only thing that was a little bit of a wrinkle in it was if Auburn had beaten Alabama, we were gonna play in the SEC Championship,” Carter said. “That threw a little wrinkle in it — not to say he would’ve coached in that game — but with the shorter time period that was maybe the only little nuance to it. But absolutely, it was very clear that coaching in the postseason was not going to be an option for Coach Kiffin a few weeks ago.”
Carter’s comments align with reports that came out of Oxford in the final weeks of Kiffin’s tenure. While it makes sense for Ole Miss to forbid Kiffin from coaching the Rebels on his way out (while potentially actively recruiting Ole Miss players to join him at LSU in the process), the refusal to allow him to coach in the College Football Playoff also served as the school’s best leverage point in trying to keep him in Oxford.
That didn’t work out and Kiffin left the program with hurt feelings all the way around, which comes as little surprise given his history of messy departures. The war of words between the two sides — albeit a very Southern one with a decidedly “bless his heart” tone from Carter and Ole Miss — in the aftermath was to be expected.
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