PARADISE VALLEY, AZ – He’s clearly tired of getting dragged into these hypotheticals, the delicious soundbites feeding the starving masses.
But since everyone wants an answer, Pete Golding finally relented the day before the biggest game in Ole Miss history. Before we find out if this storybook, screw you ride continues for a team, a university and a community hell-bent on exposing the one thing we’ve all overlooked.
Did Lane Kiffin make Ole Miss, or did Ole Miss make Kiffin?
“I don’t have a message for anybody else,” Golding said — because that’s how he has played the past month as the new Ole Miss coach. Stick to the script, coach the team, win the day.
And then it happened.
“I do think the message is I’m replaceable,” Golding continued. “You’re replaceable. Our players are replaceable. You want to build a program where it’s headed in the right direction, and one person or one player is not going to derail that.”
Let me explain for those not skilled at reading between the lines: the Ole Miss team, the program, is more than Lane Kiffin.
In fact, it may very well be better off without him.
If this team was built Kiffin-centric, it falls apart in the College Football Playoff — instead of winning two games to set up a Fiesta Bowl semifinal showdown with Miami.
Instead of the team’s biggest and brightest players — including star quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and tailback Kewan Lacy — committing to return to Oxford next season. They and many others on the Ole Miss roster have been actively recruited by Kiffin to join him at LSU, not long after he left Oxford for the bright lights and championship history of the school that just fired its coach after he won 34 games in three and a half seasons.
When you think about it, there’s really no decision to be made. Stay at Ole Miss, or leave for LSU and play for the coach who flat left you to fend for yourselves in the biggest moments of your playing careers?
Or leave for the coach who, prior to this season, hadn’t proven to be an elite coach. Hadn’t proven he could build a championship roster at the Power conference level.
His best team — even better than this year’s white-hot group — did what his teams seem to always do: play down to competition. The 2024 Ole Miss team could’ve made the CFP and advanced this far if it didn’t collapse at home against an awful Kentucky team, and to a reeling Florida team in Gainesville.
And while Kiffin was set on the transition of former five-star quarterback recruit Austin Simmons for 2025, Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. found Chambliss at Division II Ferris State, and convinced him to join the Rebels as a backup. Hey, you never know what could happen.
“There’s a plan for everything,” Chambliss said.
This is beginning to feel like the Ole Miss plan all along. Find the one coach who can illuminate the path to winning and convince high-rolling boosters to bankroll it, and then get there and squeeze the life out of the moment.
Kiffin showed the path, did the heavy lifting and got Ole Miss to the party. Then Golding took over and began producing a sweet symphony that only underscored the undeniable reality of sports.
“It’s always about the players,” said Ole Miss associate head coach Joe Judge. “There’s a reason coaches aren’t out there playing. We’re here drinking coffee and eating potato chips.”
Or doing daily hot yoga sesh, and avoiding red meat.
Look, I’m not trying to minimize what Kiffin accomplished at Ole Miss. The results paint a clear picture of where it was in Oxford before he arrived in 2020, and what it became.
He had four double-digit win seasons in the past five, an unheard of string of success at a school that has never played in the SEC championship game, and hasn’t won a conference championship game since the days of legendary coach Johnny Vaught.
He marketed the hell out of the program — “Come to the ‘Sip” — and made it hip to play in a tiny southern town where life moves as slow and sweet as sugarcane molasses. He embraced the transfer portal quickly and with robust intent while most other coaches complained about it.
But understand this: He was given free reign at Ole Miss by an athletic director and a president that said yes to everything.
Want to place a Ferrari in front of the Carrier House, the stately Oxford mansion and home of the university president for decades, to attract recruits? Why not.
Or an expanded staff of analysts to help build out recruiting and development, a staff so deep with coaching experience that some of those analysts could move to on-field roles while Kiffin played games with what coaches would be allowed to leave LSU and coach Ole Miss during the CFP.
Or an NIL war chest so deep, Ole Miss could annually rebuild and turn over a roster through the transfer portal, and then supplement with high school recruiting. Or the exact opposite of how championship teams are typically built.
Give all of that to many FBS coaches, and watch what happens. For every Kiffin, there will obviously be more like Billy Napier, who received the same framework from Florida and failed miserably.
But there are also coaches like Golding, who bust their tails for years in the NCAA lower divisions, get a job at the FBS level as an assistant, and then one day find themselves staring at an opportunity they could only dream of early in their career.
Ole Miss lost at Georgia in October under Kiffin, and came back two months later — against an improved Georgia defense — and beat the Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal under Golding. Does that mean the Rebels are better off without Kiffin?
Not by a long shot.
But it does mean everybody is replaceable.
When is Fiesta Bowl? What TV channel is Ole Miss vs Miami on?
The Fiesta Bowl is 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 8 and the main broadcast will be on ESPN.
CFP schedule, bracket
Here’s the CFP schedule with the bracket moving into the semifinals:
CFP semifinal Fiesta Bowl: No. 6 Ole Miss vs. No. 10 Miami, 7:30 p.m. ET, Thursday, Jan. 8, State Farm Stadium (Glendale, Arizona); ESPN (Fubo)
CFP semifinal Peach Bowl: No. 1 Indiana vs. No. 5 Oregon, 7:30 p.m. ET, Friday, Jan. 9, Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta); ESPN (Fubo)
National championship game: No. 1 Indiana/No. 5 Oregon vs. No. 6 Ole Miss/No. 10 Miami, 7:30 p.m. ET, Monday, Jan. 19, Hard Rock Stadium (Miami Gardens, Florida); ESPN (Fubo)