Welcome back to big time College Football, Ole Miss. We missed you.
It’s only been 63 years. But you finally made it.
It all ended Thursday night in a thriller in which No. 6 Ole Miss played well enough to win, but fell in the final moments, 31-27, to No. 10 Miami in the College Football Playoff semifinal Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona.
The Rebels finished 13-2 – their greatest season ever. The most wins Ole Miss ever had in a season before now was 11-2 in 2023. From 1972 through 2020, Ole Miss had exactly two 10-win seasons in 2003 and ’15. Since 2021, the Rebels have had four.
When those kinds of seasons happen at a place that hadn’t been winning much, you tend to lose your coach, which is what happened. Lane Kiffin rebuilt Ole Miss from a program that had three losing seasons out of four before him and major probation before that and mostly mediocrity for the last 50 years into a powerhouse.
Another CFP Classic – Miami 31, Ole Miss 27. Great season by all the Rebels – those there tonight and those not.
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) January 9, 2026
Ole Miss’ offense under Kiffin has been state of the art and better than many in the NFL, where he will one day return. Consistently, it has been one of most dangerous, fastest and balanced offenses in the country since he got to Oxford in 2020.
After Kiffin left for LSU following the regular season, it was still Kiffin’s offense that toyed with Tulane in a 41-10 win in a playoff opener.
It was Kiffin’s offense that led Ole Miss to an upset of No. 3 Georgia, 39-34, last week in the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal. Kiffin’s attack called by his future LSU offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. put up 473 yards against a defense allowing only 284 a game for 10th in the nation.
Rebel quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, whom Kiffin and Weis schooled out of Division II, completed 30 of 46 passes for 362 yards and two touchdowns. Running back Kewan Lacy gained 98 yards on 22 carries with two touchdowns.
Kiffin left all that because he thinks LSU is a better job than Ole Miss, and it was time to move. It had been six years, which is about 42 in coach dog years. That’s normal. Coaches move. LSU is not a better job than Ole Miss now by any means. LSU is 42-24 overall and 23-17 in the Southeastern Conference over the last five seasons with no playoffs. Ole Miss is 52-15 and 28-12 in the SEC over that span with two playoff wins.
Historically, LSU is a better job. The Tigers have won three national championships in the last 22 years in 2003, ’07 and 19 with a national title game appearance in the 2011 season. They have won six SEC titles since 2001.
And historically, LSU has been Ole Miss’ daddy. The Tigers lead the all-time series, 66-44-4. Ole Miss has not won an SEC title since 1963 and have won six in all. LSU has won 12. LSU has four legitimate national championships by the accepted method of wire services. Ole Miss has none.
And this is why the Ole Miss Nation has not enjoyed this season as much as it should have. It should be treasured forever. But just when things were glimmering at their brightest after a 38-19 win in Starkville for the greatest regular season finish in history at 11-1, Ole Miss’ worst nightmare happened just two days later.
It’s over. Lane Kiffin is LSU’s next football coach. Press conference introducing him set for Monday at LSU.https://t.co/kTRsVE78Of
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 30, 2025
Their coach left for their blood rival. And Ole Miss has had one hand on its butt hurt and the other on its heart for the beat of a season the likes of which it has not had since coach Johnny Vaught went 10-0 and 6-0 in 1962 for a national title by a non-accepted entity.
They haven’t known what to feel ever since. The result has been a curious mix of unabashed glee and rage simultaneously. I haven’t seen such bipolar baboons on Twitter since LSU lost its coach after the 2004 season, which was a year after its first national championship in 45 years.
Suddenly, Kiffin – this 50-year-old modern genius of an offensive coach with an old school demand for running attacks and defense – is a narcissist craving attention at every corner, say Ole Miss fans. As if he wasn’t that way for the last six years at Ole Miss and before that.
When Nick Saban left LSU after the 2004 season for the Miami Dolphins, suddenly this revered defensive genius was a snake in the grass, even though in reality, he was being an American. He went for a better job. It happens, and will happen again. Kiffin will likely leave LSU after five or six seasons and a national championship or two to coach the Dallas Cowboys.
LSU fans should prepare themselves for such an exit. But they tend to have selective memory. They don’t remember that they hated Saban as much or nearly as much as Ole Miss fans hate Kiffin now. Ole Miss fans’ psychotic flip on Kiffin after his flip is understandable, because he went to the school that has slapped around Ole Miss like a little brother for decades for the most part. But LSU fans really went off the deep end when Saban left, too, even though it was the NFL.
And when Saban left Miami two years later to take the Alabama job, they went all Ole Miss, because Alabama has been LSU’s daddy for decades.
It’s amazing how two fan bases at each other’s throats on Twitter for more than a month are so very much alike. Each somehow think if a coach succeeds at their school that coach is not supposed to leave. They think they own them. And they just can’t understand why that coach doesn’t feel the same way about their school that they do.
Then each fan base immediately knights their departing coach’s replacement, regardless of their qualifications.
Suddenly, Ole Miss fans are trying to convince themselves that interim-turned-THE coach Pete Golding is better than Kiffin. Ole Miss looked great in its playoff wins over Tulane and Georgia, and it looked great Thursday night. But that’s because Golding was given the keys to a Corvette recruited, signed and engineered by Kiffin.
Golding is the stepdaddy taking over the family after the real daddy did most of the work.
LSU fans tried to do the same thing with Les Miles when he replaced Saban. Like Golding, Miles won … with his predecessor’s players. There was no portal and NIL at the time, so Miles was still winning with Saban’s players from the No. 1 class in 2003 and the No. 2 class in 2004 three years later. When Miles won the national championship in the 2007 season, there were still more than 30 players on the team – most in starting or key roles – who were recruited, signed and engineered by Saban.
If Chambliss does get his NCAA waiver and plays for the Rebels next season, everything he does and every win Ole Miss gets with him, Golding and company need to thank Kiffin. Few other major coaches were going after Chambliss from Division II Ferris State. Whatever running back Kewan Lacy does for the Rebels next season, thank Kiffin.
The monster offense of passing, running and fast pace at Ole Miss? Thank Kiffin and Weis.
The culture of the Ole Miss program? Thank Kiffin.
Unlike Miles with Saban, Golding has given Kiffin credit, albeit indirectly by saying how good the players on his team are.
Golding garnered a lot of headlines on Wednesday when he was asked if he had a message for Kiffin.
“I don’t have (crap) to say to anybody else,” he said.
But later he again praised Kiffin possibly without realizing it.
“There’s been too much invested in that,” he said to a question about how much Kiffin may or may not have been missed in the playoffs. “And it’s been aligned correctly, so that one person is not going to impact something so drastically. If it is (impacted by one person so drastically), it’s probably not built right.”
So, what he’s saying is it was built right … by Kiffin.
“We’ve got really good players,” Golding said again. “There was already a culture created.”
By Kiffin.
Golding, a Hammond native who was a great defensive coordinator at Alabama and at Ole Miss, may do a great job as Ole Miss’ head coach. And if that happens, Ole Miss should thank Kiffin. … He hired Golding.
Enjoy the afterglow of your greatest season since the early 1960s, Ole Miss.
Don’t worry about who gets the credit. Just enjoy it. If you try to give it too much to Golding, you’re only being silly.
Don’t worry about who gets the credit. Because Lane Kiffin should get most of it. And everybody knows it – Trinidad, Kewan, and all the players who are not being overly emotional and immature. And Pete and all the coaches know it, too.
This was Lane Kiffin’s players and coaches and culture. And offense.
Maybe it was a good idea not to let him coach the team through the playoffs.
But at the Sugar Bowl last week, when Ole Miss pulled off its greatest win in history over Georgia, Kiffin shouldn’t have been banished to a women’s basketball game at LSU.
He should have been in the Ole Miss president’s suite at the Superdome.
Because that was his Corvette down there.
Be the first to comment