Lane Kiffin has messily exited stage left and Mississippi wasted no time in promoting from within to hand the reins over to Pete Golding for the upcoming College Football Playoff run and beyond.
The move is one for continuity in Oxford, Miss., but also a realization that the coaching carousel has largely passed the Rebels by. Top options like Jon Sumrall (Tulane to Florida) and Alex Golesh (South Florida to Auburn) were off the board by the time Ole Miss actually got an answer from Kiffin. The school was caught between a rock and a hard place given that they will be in the playoff next month.
So they have made a move for continuity and keeping the current team together by turning things over to the team’s defensive coordinator for his first head coaching job. It’s understandable given the pressure of the moment but a massive risk at the same time for the program long term in not fully exploring the market to make sure it has the right guy in charge.
Maybe it all works out this postseason and moving forward, but it’s simply hard to see Ole Miss following up the most successful stretch in school history by reaching those same highs under Golding. This is the SEC after all, where the margins are thin and the ability to sustain a winning culture just got a lot harder after this weekend.
What it means for Mississippi
You have to wonder if there’s a bit of a parallel to what Ole Miss is doing and what their bitter rivals Mississippi State did just a few years ago. After Mike Leach’s sudden death in 2022, the Bulldogs elevated defensive coordinator Zach Arnett to take the job full time, hoping to keep an impressive run going by picking someone who knew the program well, had great connections to the players and understood the job’s limitations better than most.
It turned out to be a flop of a decision as Arnett lasted just one season, went 5–6 overall and appeared overwhelmed at times. Recruiting trailed off, wins never materialized and a hard reset of the entire operation followed that led to the Bulldogs to hire Jeff Lebby.
Golding knows Ole Miss well and is a veteran in the SEC, but it’s not foolish to think that the school administration is trying to thread the needle between the short term and the long term by promoting Golding—knowing they could be ready to pull the plug again if things don’t go well. That seems like where we’re headed with every coaching hire nowadays, but it may be a particularly apt description in swiftly promoting the team’s current defensive coordinator who some in their conference don’t mind seeing get the job one bit.
What it means for Pete Golding
It’s obviously a terrific thing to get the full-time gig without much ambiguity over the coming weeks for Golding. He gets to become an SEC head coach at a place he really enjoys working at. That’s hard to beat for the veteran coach who went to school in the state, especially since he didn’t seem like a candidate to move with Kiffin to LSU long term.
The issue Golding faces is that he is simply not his old boss. He’ll be compared to Kiffin in every respect, and it sure doesn’t help that the former is down the road in Baton Rouge with what should be easier access to a talented roster. Golding will have to keep things rolling in a conference which somehow feels even more competitive than it was just a few years ago.
That’s a hard bar to clear, much less for a first-time head coach who will be having a lot thrown at him.
Final Grade: C-
If you were to ask opposing SEC coaches and fan bases if they were excited that Ole Miss simply promoted Golding instead of going out to land a proven head coach, they would be over the moon. Maybe he unlocks the place and keeps things rolling outside the Grove, but history and common sense says this is taking a big chance on a coordinator who didn’t particularly distinguish his units on the field either.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Grading Pete Golding as Ole Miss Head Coach: Rebels Take Giant Risk.
