Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss, and the Chaos of Modern College Football

By: Jonathan Karas

December 15, 2025

Photo Credits: CNN

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Well, for everyone other than fans of Ole Miss football. With the holidays approaching as well as everyone’s favorite sports event, the college football playoff, it is a pretty good time of year for most. But not Ole Miss fans. The Rebels sit at 11-1 on the year, are ranked #6 in the nation (in the CFP), and are tied for first in a loaded SEC conference, but at the same time, everything is coming undone for them.

This past week it was announced that their decorated head coach, Lane Kiffin, would be departing them for their rival LSU to take the same job there. That’s bad as it is, but to make matters worse, Kiffin will leave Oxford immediately and NOT coach this team for the postseason either. This monumental move has so many implications, not just for Ole Miss, but for college football as a whole, and it feels like a harbinger for more potential changes to come in an already wild time for the sport.

Lane Kiffin has long been one of the most respected names in coaching at the collegiate level. The 50-year-old has been a head coach across the sport for some of the most prominent programs in the country. After a brief stint as the Oakland Raiders’ coach, Kiffin has bounced between USC, Tennessee, Ole Miss, and now LSU. Each move has seemed to be met with some controversy, but his most recent departure may be the most controversial of them all.

Even with rumors swirling all year long of Kiffin potentially departing after this season, his team was still able to block out the noise and will their way to an 11-1 record to end the regular season, the best record in the program’s long history. Despite all of this, Kiffin was still ready to take another job, but at the same time, he did want to finish out his historic season with Ole Miss. The school saw it a different way.

Kiffin reportedly expected to continue coaching his Ole Miss team until the end of the season but was met with backlash from the school’s athletic department. Despite the amazing things he did with his team this year, the school simply would not allow Kiffin to coach the team in the postseason with clear plans to join rival LSU as soon as their season ended. With this, Kiffin allegedly was upset and even began to give his assistants ultimatums about leaving with him immediately or not having a job with him at LSU. Kiffin did his best to screw over the program he believed was screwing him over, while the rest of the world knows that any sane program would do the same.

While this is a pretty interesting story in terms of morals and doing the right thing in college sports, that is not the main point of the story today. Instead, Kiffin’s departure from Ole Miss to LSU adds fuel to the fire of a problem that already existed in college football and now becomes even bigger with such a high-profile example. This problem is the growing number of coaches like Kiffin, who are leaving their teams mid-season or, even in this case, right before the playoffs, for other jobs. When a bigger-money school comes calling, coaches are easily able to bolt instantly without regard for their current programs.

All of the change across college football makes a situation like this possible, and even worse. With NIL beginning to serve in some ways like free agency, this coaching situation in some ways feels similar. Just like how players can basically up and leave at smaller schools with less NIL money, coaches are doing the same, leaving their schools in bad situations when they get a better offer for more money from a bigger school, leaving their old schools high and dry. Kiffin is a good example of someone who not only left their old team but also tried to take all of his assistants as well, which makes the matter at hand worse.

Legendary college basketball coach Rick Pitino, who is currently at St. John’s University, had an interesting sentiment on the matter via Twitter/X. “I'm not knocking football, but there’s something wrong with their calendar,” Pitino tweeted. “I'm at SJU and we are potentially a one seed and can win a National Championship this year, and I leave in March??? What’s going on here?”

I think many would echo this idea. Why is it that in college football a coach can do this? You would never see a situation like this occur in basketball just mere weeks before the NCAA Tournament. Why can’t college football follow the same suit? None of this is good for pretty much anyone, and it is an especially bad look for the brand and sport.

All in all, while this situation is not a great one for Ole Miss, Lane Kiffin, or the sport as a whole, it is a call to action for changes to be made for the future of college football. The pressure falls onto the various governing bodies of college football. Conferences themselves, the college football playoff, and even the NCAA itself need to do a better job of regulating some of these coaching hirings. They could create specific windows when schools can and cannot talk to coaches and make a very clear timeline that does not interfere with the current season, or even just fully not allow a coach to leave before his team has been eliminated during a season.

Obviously the rigorous recruiting time (especially with NIL & portal changes) is a key component of why coaches are moving earlier than ever before, but that also could be something adjusted by these various governing bodies to ensure fairness and maximize competition. This is an important moment in the sport, illustrating the shift from loyalty and tradition to business incentives, and raises the all-important question: what kind of college football do we want?