LSU lures Lane Kiffin away from virtual playoff lock Ole Miss

Lane Kiffin announced Sunday he is leaving his one-loss Ole Miss team to become the coach at LSU, taking over a Tigers program that has won national titles under three of its previous four coaches.

The move, disclosed by Kiffin on social media, comes two days after No. 6 Mississippi's 39-19 victory over Mississippi State in the rivals' annual Egg Bowl game that all but guaranteed the Rebels a playoff berth.

“I was hoping to complete a historic six season run with this year's team by leading Ole Miss through the playoffs, capitalizing on the team's incredible success and their commitment to finish strong,” Kiffin wrote, adding that he would maintained “guardrails in place to protect the program in any areas of concern.”

Kiffins said Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter denied his request "despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance."

“Unfortunately, that means Friday's Egg Bowl was my last game coaching the Rebels,” he added.

After an Ole Miss team meeting Sunday afternoon, players including defensive back TJ Banks told reporters waiting outside that defensive coordinator Pete Golding was now the head coach. Mississippi athletics officials did not immediately confirm the move, but said an announcement was planned later Sunday.

Two prominent Ole Miss alumni with close ties to the athletic department, speaking on condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made, said they'd been informed of Golding's promotion.

The timing has been awkward for Ole Miss, Kiffin and college football in general. Kiffin made his announcement exactly one week before the 12-team College Football Playoff bracket is announced; the Rebels are all but certain to be included after a 11-1 regular season.

Kiffin, considered one of the top offensive coaches in college football, and Carter had agreed a week earlier that a decision had to be made by this weekend. Carter could not afford to wait until after critical recruiting periods in December and transfer periods in January had passed before starting his coaching search.

The CFP begins on Dec. 19, the semifinals don’t occur until Jan. 8-9 and the final is Jan. 19. Negotiations over the terms of Kiffin's departure dragged on throughout Saturday and into Sunday.

Golding takes over the first Ole Miss team to win 11 regular-season games. A former Ole Miss player himself, Golding is in his third season on the Rebels' staff after serving five years as a top defensive assistant at Alabama under former Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban.

Kiffin, meanwhile, was bound for neighboring Louisiana to take over one of Rebels' oldest rivals.

It was Kiffin's success at Ole Miss — where he went 55-19 in six seasons — that made him a target of several major programs seeking new coaches. Kiffin also was pursued by Florida, which fired coach Billy Napier a week before LSU cut ties with Brian Kelly.

While LSU offered Kiffin a raise over his current $9 million annual salary, the decision presumably was about more than money.

LSU has a championship brand in multiple sports; state-of-the-art facilities; a rabid, regional fan following; and a legendary, historic home football venue in Tiger Stadium (nicknamed Death Valley), which towers over the banks of the Mississippi River and holds 102,000 spectators — 38,000 more than Mississippi's Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

The lone football coach of LSU's past four who did not win a national championship was Kelly. He was fired in late October during his fourth season — a seismic development that also led then-Athletic Director Scott Woodward to resign under pressure from Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.

New athletic director Verge Ausberry — a Louisiana native, former Tigers football player and long-time LSU administrator — led a search for a new coach that focused primarily on Kiffin. LSU reportedly offered Kiffin $90 million in salary during seven years and pledged to ensure the football program has ample financial backing to pay players.

At Ole Miss, Kiffin split four meetings with Kelly's Tigers — the home team winning each.

Perhaps more importantly, Kiffin has overseen one of the most successful stints in Ole Miss football history, arguably exceeded by only Johnny Vaught, whose 25 seasons at Ole Miss included a six-year period from 1957 through 1962 during which his teams went a combined 57-6.

Kelly, who was in the midst of a 10-year contract worth about $100 Million at LSU, went 34-14 with the Tigers.

LSU is 247-84 with three national championships since the 2000 season, which was Nick Saban's first with the Tigers. Saban won his national title at LSU in the 2003 season and went 48-16 in five years before leaving to coach in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins. Les Miles, hired in 2005, went 114-34 with a national title in 2007. Ed Orgeron, who succeeded Miles during the 2016 season, went 51-20, highlighted by his 15-0, national-title winning campaign in 2019.

Kiffin, son of the late, long-time NFL and college defensive coach Monte Kiffin, played quarterback in college at Fresno State. He got his first head-coaching job at any level in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders in 2007, but was fired just four games into his second season.

His took first college head-coaching job at Tennessee in 2009 and left after one season to take over at Southern California, where he was fired five games into his fourth season. He returned to coaching in 2017 with Florida Atlantic, spending three seasons there before Ole Miss lured him to Oxford in 2020.

Kiffin has said he adopted the mantra of striving to “do things better than they've ever been done before," from one of his mentors, Pete Carroll, under whom Kiffin served as an assistant at USC from 2001 to 2006.

No coach has ever won multiple national championships at LSU. Kiffin will be the next to try.

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