By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Radio
What if?
What if Lane Kiffin had remained as Ole Miss’ head football coach last season? Or what if he had taken the LSU job, but had been allowed to coach his Rebels of six seasons in the College Football Playoffs, which he guided Ole Miss to for the first time?
And how would Kiffin had done in the CFP? Would a Kiffin-led Ole Miss team defeated Miami in the semifinals? Instead, Ole Miss lost 31-27 to Miami under defensive coordinator Pete Golding, who got the head coaching job with no head coaching experience when Kiffin left for LSU after a 13-2 and 7-1 SEC regular season. Golding led Ole Miss to playoff wins over Tulane, 41-10, and Georgia, 39-34, before the Miami loss.
“I see no reason to believe that that (Ole Miss’ win over Georgia) would’ve changed,” Yahoo Sports columnist Dan Wolken said on Tiger Rag Radio Tuesday night.
Listen to Wolken’s entire radio appearance by clicking on the box below:
“I think Ole Miss would’ve beat Georgia with or without Lane,” Wolken said. “They had the lead when they played them in the regular season and probably should’ve closed it.”
Georgia came back from a 35-26 deficit in the fourth quarter to beat Ole 43-35 on Oct. 18 in Athens, Georgia, as Golding’s defense allowed 510 total yards, including 221 on the ground, while Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr.’s offense was held to 351 yards and 88 yards on the ground.
“And I see no reason to believe that if they would’ve played Miami under Lane, they would’ve won if Lane was there,” Wolken said. “But who knows?”
Wolken was critical of Kiffin leaving Ole Miss for LSU before the playoffs last season.
A rational administration at LSU or UF would realize if Lane Kiffin is the kind of person who’s willing to walk away from a playoff team to take another job, he’s probably not the person you want to lead your program.
— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) November 18, 2025
But none of this is rational. https://t.co/KvnkymKx4n
But he also can’t wait to see what Kiffin does this season with the Tigers.
“Who isn’t intrigued by what’s going to happen with Lane at LSU, especialy this season with all the money they’ve into this roster?” Wolken said of the estimated $30-to-$40 million price tag on the Tigers’ roster, including the 41-man portal addition.
“And they’re not shy about talking about it and promoting it,” he said. “The hype train is going to be what it is. And certainly Lane is taking a different approach. I’ve not seen him on social media lately. Seems to be in a the bunker a little bit.”
Kiffin stopped tweeting shortly after he made some controversial comments about Ole Miss’ racial history in a Vanity Fair article last May.
“And he’s maybe trying to tamp down some of the expectations,” Wolken said. “But when you hire Lane with all the hullabaloo that went around that situation and all the money they’re putting in, I don’t think that’s really going to be a successful endeavor. It’s going to be really interesting to see how they look. Lane’s going to win. We know that. He’s a good coach. But he’s never won anything of significance in terms of championships. And that’s now the expectation. He’s a guy who has a very interesting approach publicly to the way he curates his image. And if that (a championship) doesn’t happen right away, it’s going to be interesting to see how he responds.”
It should be noted that when Nick Saban came to LSU before the 2000 season, he had only won one championship – a shared Mid-American Conference title with Central Michigan as Toledo’s head coach in 1990. And he was about the same age when he took over at LSU in 1999 – 48 – as Kiffin was when he arrived at LSU last December, which was 50. Saban won an SEC title in his second season at LSU in 2001 and the SEC championship and national championship at LSU in the 2003 season before winning nine SEC titles and six national championships at Alabama.
Kiffin didn’t win any championships as the Oakland Raiders coach in the NFL in 2007 and ’08, as Tennessee’s coach in 2009, as USC’s coach from 2010-13 or as Ole Miss’ coach from 2020-25. But as USC’s coach in 2011, Kiffin won the Pacific-12 South division, but was ineligible to play in the Pac-12 championship game against Oregon because of inherited NCAA probation. Without the sanctions, Kiffin’s USC team would have played for the league title against Oregon, which USC beat 38-35 in the regular season.
And while at Florida Atlantic, Kiffin’s 2017 and ’19 teams each won Conference-USA championships. And at Ole Miss last season, his Rebels did tie three other other teams at 7-1 for the regular season lead, but did not play in the SEC Championship Game because of tiebreakers.
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