It is hard right now not to root for Ole Miss in the semifinal round of the College Football Playoffs. That’s nothing against the University of Miami, not that I’m a huge fan, and it really isn’t anything about Mississippi, a school I usually have relative indifference towards besides it being part of the SEC. The reason I’m rooting for Ole Miss is because if Ole Miss wins a national championship, their now former head coach Lane Kiffin doesn’t.
For context, and as is well documented, Kiffin just left Mississippi at the end of the regular season and before the playoff started to begin his new job as head coach at LSU, a university that supposedly had greater resources and a better chance at winning titles. That decision came after basically a year of the high profile coach conducting interviews with would be university suitors, including LSU and Florida. So even while he was coaching his team to a playoff worthy season, he had one foot quite publicly out the door. It’s like jumping on every dating app during your anniversary.
Once Kiffin chose LSU as his future workplace – and Ole Miss did what they could to keep him –Mississippi denied his request to continue coaching the team during the playoffs, even though the divorce was imminent – kind of like a friends with benefits arrangement. And so defensive coordinator Pete Golding was put in as interim head coach for the playoffs, leading a staff that’s going to be pilfered to head to Baton Rouge. In fact, Kiffin has made it clear he wants some of these assistant coaches to head over ASAP, playoffs or not, which has further fueled the overall distain for Kiffin and his exit.
Despite all that, a team without a head coach and a ton of pressure to tear apart the staff, the Rebels won not only one playoff game as expected against Tulane, they won their second against SEC Champ Georgia, now putting them in the semis in a winnable game against the higher seeded Miami Hurricanes. And now only two wins away from an unlikely national title for a school that’s historically a notch below the true blue bloods of southeastern football.
This is why America, at least outside of South Florida, Indiana, and Oregon, is suddenly getting behind a team from the dixie south that hasn’t been relevant since Eli Manning played there – and probably not since his dad played before that. Because one, it’s a team that seems to be forging on even though their leader left them for greener pastures – and did so quite publicly. And two, because everyone seems to hate Lane Kiffin, or at least the archetype he represents.
I won’t go into the whole idea about coaches leaving athletes they recruited to campus, usually after they promised they weren’t going anywhere. That used to be a much bigger deal before athletes couldn’t do the exact same thing, making college football a lot more transient than a youth hostel. So especially now, I get that people do leave jobs and take new ones, whether it’s college football coach or tax accountant. But what I think resonates so much here was the way it was done. When Lane Kiffin largely pranced for the cameras throughout the fall football season in one extended public interview, he largely reinforced the idea that he and his choice of extravagant livelihood was singularly significant, and the bright lights should always be on him. That’s a lot of chutzpa even in the ego laden world of alpha football coaches. At the same time, he’s asking his players to keep rowing the same direction, and probably something about no I in team, in the middle of all that, he’s making sure everyone understands he’s still number one. And he’s doing it even now that he’s gone, trying to force his newly hired assistants to leave Mississippi now and give up both the experience and the players making it happen. From that vantage, Kiffin represents the worst in big time college sports. Not the money and the often misguided priorities and all that. But the individual hubris that takes away from the notion of team, one of sports’ most enduring positive attributes.
So, like many sports fans, I’m rooting for Ole Miss to win it all. Because if they do, Lane Kiffin still doesn’t.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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