Head coach Lane Kiffin shocked Ole Miss fans and the college football world by leaving to coach the LSU Tigers, bringing many members of his coaching staff with him. Kiffin hopes to leave his mark on this already legendary program by bringing some of his best players with him to LSU.
After taking on his new role, he will be unable to coach the Ole Miss team during their College Football Playoff run, as the Ole Miss administration did not want him to coach once he announced his departure.
Currently, Ole Miss is in the CFP as the six seed and has an outstanding 11-1 record. They are set to play No. 11 Tulane on Saturday, December 20th, and it remains to be seen whether they can rise to the challenge without their legendary coach or if they will fall short of the expectations he set.
With LSU gaining its new coach, the program plans to return to the national championship stage, just as it did under Ed Orgeron. However, it failed to come close to that goal under Brian Kelly. As a legendary program, LSU expects nothing less than a national championship.
This move is significant for Kiffin, as he will be tested at a top-tier program, especially since he has never won a national championship and has only two conference championships in his career, both of which he won with the FAU Owls.
The next couple of seasons will be crucial for Kiffin, as a conference title will be expected. With only those two titles on his résumé, he will need to work hard to keep LSU fans satisfied with his performance.
Even with Kiffin leaving Ole Miss, he still hopes the team will achieve what they worked for all season, even without him leading the way, as he posted. “Go win it all!!!” after leaving the team.
While Kiffin says he has a strong relationship with his players, some of them would disagree. One player even posted, “Don’t get me started on Lane, he’s been a snake since I met him,” and continued, “I have teammates that can vouch, especially if you were there in 2020–21 and played defense.” This suggests there is more to the story than Kiffin may be letting on.
Although Kiffin claims the Ole Miss athletic director wanted him to coach the team on their CFP run, the players have a different story. “That was not the message you said in the meeting room,” linebacker Suntarine Perkins posted.
With all these stories coming out about how accomplished Kiffin is, it seems that he might have been a problem all along. Ole Miss will try to prove or disprove that theory by chasing the school’s first national championship in 65 years, having previously claimed a title in 1960.
With all of this drama around their head coach, LSU might have gotten into something they can’t handle, and Ole Miss might have dodged a bullet on their way to a national championship.
