Here’s the long and the short of the bizarre, borderline tawdry Lane Kiffin–Mississippi–LSU love triangle: The 2025 Rebels football team should be the first consideration for everyone.
Ole Miss is having its best season since the 1960s, at least, and has a chance to win a national championship. It’s a lock for the College Football Playoff and will almost assuredly host a first-round playoff game that might be the biggest sporting event in Mississippi state history. Whatever best protects the competitive integrity of the current team should guide every decision.
But the adults in alleged leadership positions are threatening to screw it all up. Sources laid out the following sticky scenario to Sports Illustrated on Saturday night, as Decision Day became Indecision Day, dragging on past midnight ET:
Kiffin is ready to bail on Ole Miss for LSU. But he might also want to coach the Rebels in the playoff before leaving. (Which, apparently, LSU is willing to countenance.) The spurned Ole Miss administration isn’t in love with this idea and would prefer to simply send him on his way, turning the playoff run over to Kiffin’s remaining staff.
But how much of that staff would stay, and how much would go with him to LSU, and how soon? If Kiffin threatens to take everything but the Who Hash with him to Baton Rouge, immediately, is that sufficient blackmail for the school to acquiesce and keep him onboard for the playoff?
It’s disgusting to think that the school and Kiffin would use this once-in-a-lifetime season as leverage in competing power plays, but welcome to college football. The more the coaches and administrators talk about putting the “student-athletes” first, the less you should believe them.
If I were calling the shots in this case, I would ask the team leaders—captains or a leadership council, whichever Ole Miss uses—what they believe gives them the best chance for a successful playoff. If that means Kiffin staying aboard, Ole Miss needs to swallow its bruised pride and let him do it. This is not the time for an ego play. And given Kiffin’s hands-on role as the play-caller and primary offensive strategist, not having him would seem to be a net negative.
But if the players say they’d prefer an interim coach still on the staff, go ahead with that plan. And if Kiffin does anything to complicate a plan for an interim coach who the players endorse, shoot him into the sun. He is, after all, the person who created this situation.
Would keeping Kiffin on for a playoff run be messy and potentially problematic? Yes. He could spend those weeks working on players he’d like to take with him to LSU, potentially fleecing the Rebels’ roster. He might be only half-in on the job, as he was as the offensive coordinator at Alabama in 2016 when he’d been named the head coach at Florida Atlantic. Nick Saban was so unimpressed with Kiffin’s work in the CFP semifinal against Washington that he fired him before the final, sending him on his way early to Boca Raton, Fla.
But if he’s dialed in on a title pursuit, Ole Miss should let him do it. Winning a national title is a forever thing, especially at a school that isn’t perennially in the mix. Ask Auburn fans if the school’s one year with Cam Newton was worth the downturn that followed. Ask Michigan if the 2023 title with Jim Harbaugh was more important than an 8–5 ’24 and a 9–3 ’25.
If fully going for it winds up costing the Rebels in ’26 and beyond, O.K. Worrying about the future—recruiting and the portal—instead of doing everything possible to win here and now would be misplaced priorities. And frankly, in the current landscape, rosters can be replenished at warp speed.
Still, the entire situation stinks. It springs from the disastrous football calendar, which puts the major recruiting dates—portal and high school—in the middle of the playoff schedule. That accelerates coaches’ decision-making timetable into the latter stages of the regular season, forcing them to abandon the team-first philosophy they preach the first 10 months of the year.
One of the biggest lies football coaches ever told was that the present can and should be compromised for the sake of a single future recruiting class.
The fact that Kiffin is the coach in the middle of this fiasco is fitting. He’s always craved chaos, always been erratic, always had an eye on his next job, always been a pain in the neck for his bosses. Just because he does yoga and stopped drinking doesn’t make him mature.
But he is an undeniable talent, and colleges have always been willing to make compromises for talent. In the case of Kiffin, both LSU and Ole Miss are reportedly willing to offer massive money to a coach who has never been to the playoff and never played in the SEC title game.
For the entirety of his career, it’s been a delicate balance between whether Kiffin’s talent is worth the trouble. All the wins and pretty ball plays at Ole Miss will be forgotten if he walks out on a title run—but it also would be a shame if the Rebels don’t put the 2025 team first and foremost in deciding how to proceed.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Forde Sources: Lane Kiffin Ready to Leave for LSU, CFP Run Hinders Decision.
