Every coach who leaves one program for another knows the expectation: If you leave, you’d better win. If you leave for a rival, you’d better win big enough that people stop caring how ugly the exit felt. Right now, months after pulling off one of the SEC’s messiest coaching divorces, Lane Kiffin is still stuck in the ugly phase.
As longtime Ole Miss insider Neal McCready put it, “this week became Lane Kiffin Revisionist History Week.” He had meant to unleash his opinion in September, but after what the LSU head coach revealed to Vanity Fair about his former team, he decided to publish immediately instead.
Advertisement
“Here’s the nut graf,” Neal McCready said on the McCready & Siskey podcast. “Lane Kiffin’s trying to burn down Ole Miss because Lane Kiffin’s still mad that he didn’t get to coach in the playoffs.”
That’s the accusation now hanging over this situation. Not just that, Lane Kiffin left for rival LSU, which Ole Miss fans view as football treason. It’s the belief that once he realized he couldn’t have everything exactly the way he wanted, the relationship turned toxic. McCready compared it to someone demanding something unavailable at a restaurant.
“Could I recommend the chicken piccata? That’s not what I want,” he said. “I want Beef Wellington. Beef Wellington’s not on the menu. But I want Beef Wellington. But it’s not on the menu. We don’t serve that, sir. That’s where we are with Lane Kiffin.”
Advertisement
By late October and early November, according to McCready, Lane Kiffin already knew what was going to happen. He couldn’t become LSU’s next coach and continue leading Ole Miss through a CFP run. Ole Miss AD Keith Carter was never going to allow that arrangement.
“You simply cannot, as an SEC school, say, yep, you know what, you’re going to take a job that you’re saying is better,” he explained. “And we’re going to let you, as the LSU coach, coach Ole Miss for the next month, potentially month and two-thirds, and recruit our players. And he absolutely would have recruited the Ole Miss players.”
According to reports, Lane Kiffin wanted to stay through the playoff while preparing for LSU. Ole Miss refused. Players learned there were discussions about offensive staffers leaving immediately if the head coach wasn’t allowed to remain through the postseason. That tension eventually led to the Rebels handing control to DC Pete Golding.
Lane Kiffin wasn’t even present at the team meeting announcing the decision. Ole Miss viewed LSU not as some distant coaching opportunity, but as a direct SEC enemy on future schedules.
Advertisement
“You’re not leaving to coach the Giants or the Dolphins,” one source told ESPN. “You’re talking about going to a place that we will play.”
Well, Lane Kiffin eventually left with TEs coach Joe Cox, WRs coach George McDonald, and OC Charlie Weis Jr. as some of the bodies that followed him to Baton Rouge. That’s why emotions are still high. And he hasn’t exactly calmed the tensions since.
Lane Kiffin’s controversial reason for leaving Ole Miss
In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Lane Kiffin openly discussed how difficult recruiting at Ole Miss is.
“‘Hey, coach, we really like you,’” he recalled the recruits saying. “‘But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.’ That doesn’t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana.”
Advertisement
Kiffin also talked about LSU’s campus diversity and atmosphere, comments that instantly reignited conversations about Ole Miss’s complicated racial history and Confederate imagery baggage.
“Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus’s diversity feels so great,” he said. “‘It feels like there’s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that’s the real world.’”
He did apologize later, but this story will continue to stick around. For Ole Miss fans, the worst possible ending would be watching him win big at LSU. So when they meet the Tigers on September 19, the crowd is going to go crazy. The Rebels fans believe Lane Kiffin abandoned them during their biggest moment. Meanwhile, he believes he made the logical career move in a sport. And both sides probably think they’re right.
Trending Articles
Advertisement
The post Lane Kiffin Hit with Serious Ole Miss Accusation Amid Fallout from Recent Drama: Report appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
