Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. If you missed it over the holiday weekend, the latest video in our Stadium Wonders series was released on Thursday. I went to Appalachian State’s Kidd Brewer Stadium, perhaps the best setting in college football. You can watch all nine videos in the series here.
In today’s SI:AM:
👋 Kiffin bolts for LSU
🏈 NFL Week 13
🤔 Time to move on from Tomlin?
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Kiffin’s ugly breakup
Lane Kiffin’s tenure as head coach at Ole Miss ended Sunday as he boarded a private jet bound for Baton Rouge while fans gathered on the tarmac to see him off with their middle fingers raised high.
After weeks of highly publicized flirting with other SEC jobs, Kiffin is leaving Oxford to run the LSU program in the wake of Brian Kelly’s departure. He will not coach the Rebels in the College Football Playoff later this month. Defensive coordinator Pete Golding has been named the new permanent head coach.
Kiffin had long been rumored to be the top target for both LSU and Florida. Kiffin’s family reportedly visited Baton Rouge and Gainesville in mid-November, with LSU officials reportedly sending a private plane for the trip there. All the while, Kiffin declined to address questions about his future with any specificity, and rumors percolated that, should he decide to leave Ole Miss, he’d still want to coach the team in the playoff.
Kiffin said in a statement announcing his decision on Sunday that he was hoping to coach the Rebels in the postseason.
“My request to do so was denied by [athletic director] Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance,” Kiffin wrote. “Unfortunately, that means Friday's Egg Bowl was my last game coaching the Rebels.”
The finger-pointing on his way out is typical of Kiffin’s previous coaching departures. Except for Florida Atlantic (which allowed Kiffin to prove he could be a successful head coach again after disappointing previous results), Kiffin has never engineered a smooth exit from a head coaching job. Raiders owner Al Davis called Kiffin a “flat-out liar” on his way out of Oakland. Then, Kiffin controversially ditched Tennessee after just a year to go to USC, which famously fired him at Los Angeles International Airport in the middle of the night.
Kiffin’s acrimonious exit from Ole Miss is a disappointing conclusion to what had been a dream run for him in Oxford. The Rebels have had only 11 seasons in their history with double-digit wins and just six in the last five decades. Four of them came under Kiffin. The program is in the midst of its best season since the 1960s, with a real chance to capture the second national championship in program history. That chance is slimmer now that Kiffin is gone, though. Kiffin is one of the premier offensive play-callers in the sport, and his ability to scheme around opposing defenses is a major reason why Ole Miss is 11–1. The Rebels rank 11th in the nation in points per game and third in total yards—with an offense quarterbacked by a guy (Trinidad Chambliss) who transferred from Division II Ferris State.
If Kiffin’s aim is to win a national championship, he’ll have a better chance of doing so at LSU than he would have at Ole Miss. LSU has a longer track record of consistent success, more money and better recruiting territory. It’s one of the premier programs in college football. The Tigers’ recent struggles are as much of an outlier as the Rebels’ recent national relevance. Unfortunately for Kiffin, chasing national championships down the line in Baton Rouge meant prematurely abandoning the title contender he’d spent six years building. It’s something Ole Miss fans will never forgive him for.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Albert Breer explains how Buffalo’s win showed the team’s strengths and weaknesses—and everything in between. He also has notes on why Carolina’s upset was real and how Chicago’s line is coming alive.
- Pat Forde examines how Kiffin, Ole Miss, LSU and others all share blame for this coaching debacle.
- Conor Orr says the time might finally have come for Pittsburgh to face the unthinkable: a post–Mike Tomlin future.
- Breer shows how one Halloween-night meeting turned the Dolphins’ season around, and why a new locker room vibe has sparked their three-game winning streak.
- Gilberto Manzano argues that it’s time to take Denver seriously. The Broncos, with nine straight wins and a wide-open AFC, are firmly in the Super Bowl conversation.
- Chris Mannix writes that the Clippers’ latest collapse, a loss to the zombie Mavs, proves L.A.’s problems run far deeper than its record.
- Henry Winter details how Chelsea captain Reece James had a coming-of-age performance against Arsenal—a match billed as a battle between Moisés Caicedo and Declan Rice—and demonstrated that he’s world-class.
The top five…
… things I saw yesterday:
5. Bo Nix’s touchdown pass while falling to the ground.
4. Connor Bedard’s stickhandling in front of the net for the game-winning goal against the Ducks. (Bedard also had a nice no-look assist earlier in the game.)
3. Two great plays on both ends of the floor by Steven Adams.
2. Puka Nacua’s diving one-handed catch.
1. A full-extension, one-handed grab by the Commanders’ Treylon Burks. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that’s one of the greatest catches in NFL history. To make it even more impressive, Burks had surgery 14 days ago to repair a spiral fracture of his middle finger on the hand he used to make the catch.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Lane Kiffin’s Acrimonious Ole Miss Exit.
