Lane Kiffin plays footsie with LSU, Florida and Ole Miss as Rebels pursue playoff bid.
Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss speaks up, says team is ‘locked in’ amid coach’s drama.
Lane Kiffin is neither the victim nor the hero of this saga.
Let’s make this much clear: Lane Kiffin is not the victim in this stay-or-go drama he’s starring in, inconvenient though the timing of college football’s hiring cycle might be.
Reputational damage aside, Kiffin is going to come out fine, no matter what he chooses.
If Kiffin spurns Mississippi for another great job, he’ll become college football’s most handsomely paid villain. There are worse ways to make a living, and he could chase greatness at either LSU or Florida.
If he stays at his current great job, he’ll be the handsomely paid coach of a program that’s supported him at every turn. This Rebels team could be winning games into January.
No need to feel sorry for multimillionaires who are coveted by multiple employers.
And just as I’m about to feel sorry for Kiffin’s players, Mississippi quarterback Trinidad Chambliss stepped to the mic and said, relax, everyone, they’re good.
To hear Chambliss tell it, he has no intention of allowing all of this Kiffin noise to interrupt the Rebels’ mission to secure a College Football Playoff bid with a win against Mississippi State.
“I don’t think we’re distracted as a team, quite frankly,” Chambliss said, with such conviction I believed him. “I feel like the guys are focused on Mississippi State and whoever we play after that.”
Trinidad Chambliss emerges as an adult in the room
How can you not like and respect Chambliss and admire his meteoric uprising?
A year ago, Chambliss played against teams like Lake Erie, American International and Slippery Rock as he starred for a Ferris State team that won the Division II national championship.
This year, he’s become the 23-year-old adult in the room, while his coach plays footsie with three schools.
Never mind Kiffin’s hijinks, because “we’re clicking at the right time,” Chambliss said of his team that’s won four in a row.
We’ll see if that holds once the cowbells start clanging in Starkville hours after Thanksgiving ends, but it’s true Ole Miss has been playing better in November than it did in September. A rivalry win would solidify a playoff spot.
Kiffin’s Ole Miss legacy hinges on what he decides about his future. Whatever he chooses, don’t let it tarnish the legacy of this magnetic quarterback, who steered this team into a No. 6 ranking and spurred victories against big brands like LSU, Oklahoma and Florida.
Lane Kiffin plays footsie, Ole Miss keeps winning
Every time Kiffin posts on X, his favorite social media app, he just fuels more speculation. He just can’t resist tweeting cheesy excerpts from the self-help book he’s reading, as fans try to interpret a greater meaning that isn’t housed in those pages.
Day 230: A mercurial coach keeps three fan bases on pins and needles. Some words pretending to be pithy and edifying go here.
Nothing cryptic from Chambliss. He took to social media to try to calm the masses.
“To our fans, this team is completely locked in, living in the moment, and staying true to our 1-0 mindset for the Egg Bowl,” Chambliss tweeted, before reiterating that message to reporters 90 minutes later.
Rebels fans have rallied around Chambliss so much that they’re flying Trinidad and Tobago flags by the dozens in the Grove. Chambliss is neither from the Caribbean island nation nor is he named after it, but the flags nonetheless serve as a show of affection.
Kiffin relies on transfers to help form the backbone of his Ole Miss rosters. He says modern athletes, in this pay-to-play ecosystem in which players move about freely, don’t worry so much about who’s going to coach the team next season.
By his logic, players don’t pledge unflinching allegiance to State U. at the rate they used to, and so they don’t expect coaches to, either.
“It’s different than what we were in when players couldn’t leave (without penalty) and players chose to go play for their home state a lot. This is a different generation,” Kiffin said. “They all can leave every year. A lot of that is financially based. They don’t think the traditional way that (they did) years ago about their coach and what’s going to go on with him next year.
“That’s not how they think anymore. It makes it a lot easier (for players) not to listen to noise.”
I’m not sure I buy all that.
Three years ago, Kiffin strongly considered leaving Ole Miss for Auburn. As the drama played out in the headlines and on social media, the Rebels collapsed, losing five of their final six games. That included an Egg Bowl loss, after which Kiffin clarified he planned to stay at Ole Miss.
For the second time in four years, he’ll coach the Egg Bowl under a cloud of uncertainty.
Kiffin, without providing clarity on where he intends to coach next season, did say he wants to coach this team through the end of this season, calling that “very important.”
“I’ve never thought of anything different than that,” Kiffin said, when asked whether he wants to finish the season.
You can almost see Kiffin convincing himself he’s Phil Jackson, and this is his “Last Dance.”
In truth, this is more like “The Bachelor,” and Kiffin awarding a rose will become the everlasting image of this season. Too bad it can’t be Chambliss, the adult in the room and the hero of this saga.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.