"Nah, We're Good": Pete Golding Makes His Feelings on Lane Kiffin Clear After Ole Miss Damage Control Move

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Some college football breakups are messy. Everybody claims they’re all good right up until somebody gives an interview that reopens old wounds. Right now, Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss are deep in that stage where everybody’s keeping score. That became obvious this week when Pete Golding was asked whether the LSU head coach reached out after the backlash surrounding his Vanity Fair comments about the Rebels.

“Lane hits me up every day,” Pete Golding told reporters at the SEC meeting in Florida. “So I get 12 text messages a day from Lane. It’s just, what do I decide to look at? So I was not looking at that one, but nah, we’re good.”

Pete Golding’s response sounded friendly on the surface. But underneath it, there was just enough bite to remind everybody that this breakup still has scars. Months after leaving Ole Miss for LSU in the middle of the Rebels’ first-ever CFP appearance, Lane Kiffin managed to stir up Oxford all over again with wild comments on an already sensitive relationship.

In the Vanity Fair interview, Lane Kiffin claimed Ole Miss’ racial history sometimes became an issue in recruiting Black athletes. According to the article, recruits would occasionally tell him that their families felt uneasy about Oxford in ways they didn’t about LSU.

“When he was coaching there, Kiffin says, top recruits would tell him, ‘Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.’ That doesn’t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” the article read.

The piece also referenced parents complimenting LSU’s diversity and contrasted demographic differences between Oxford and Baton Rouge. In fact, conversations about race and recruiting in the South aren’t baseless. Every SEC program deals with some version of those realities. But that’s just something that became the fuse to an already tense relationship. And that’s why Ole Miss fans got furious.

From their perspective, Lane Kiffin spent years building his reputation in Oxford and was throwing shade at them as soon as he left for a more powerful SEC job. Pete Golding, who stayed behind to inherit both the roster and the emotion, wasn’t interested in escalating things publicly. But he also wasn’t about to fully endorse Kiffin’s comments either.

“I really don’t have a response to it,” he told reporters. “I mean, obviously, there’s a Lane side for us that we’re buddies and our friends, and then there’s a professional side that I have to get on his a–, you know? But I think every time he gets in front of a camera, they’re bringing up Ole Miss and all that. I think the breakup wasn’t perfect. I don’t think any of them ever will be.”

This isn’t pure hatred, not even personal. It’s more complicated than that. Lane Kiffin and Pete Golding worked together for years. But now, he’s the man responsible for recruiting to Ole Miss while constantly fielding questions about remarks made by the former coach. And eventually, even friends get tired of cleaning up each other’s messes.

“I think anybody that’s been to Oxford knows that’s not where we’re at right now,” he added. “I’ve lived all over the southeast, we all got our own issues, but I think the biggest thing is to make sure people come to Oxford and see for themselves.”

Meanwhile, according to USA Today’s Matt Hayes, the SEC is reportedly discussing whether Lane Kiffin deserves some form of reprimand for the comments during spring meetings. The Tigers’ head coach defended himself by arguing that people misunderstood what he said.

“People don’t read the actual words I used in the article,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “I said, ‘A parent said.’ That’s not me saying it as my opinion.”

He may be right, but the damage is done. So when September 19 comes around, both teams will be throwing fire at each other in what could become one of the most intense SEC showdowns in 2026. Now, Pete Golding didn’t just address the Lane Kiffin comment.

Pete Golding opens up on Steve Sarkisian’s basket-weaving comment

Steve Sarkisian didn’t spare Ole Miss in his comments while discussing transfer-credit standards. He used the Rebels as an example and joked that players there could just “take basket weaving” to earn a degree. Per reports, the school pushed the SEC to punish him for violating conference bylaws against derogatory comments.

Steve Sarkisian avoided punishment but later admitted the phrase was a mistake.

“I could have used macroeconomics,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “I could have used engineering. It wouldn’t have mattered. The class was irrelevant, and that was a poor choice of words on my part.”

Pete Golding’s response came with jokes. He revealed to reporters that the Texas head coach immediately reached out after his now-infamous “basket weaving” comments.

“He hit me as soon as it went public,” he said. “We all heard the basket-weaving deal growing up and all that type of stuff. So he said he was just trying to talk about Texas and how hard it was and all that type of stuff. So I told him I appreciate it. I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna transfer, I’d much rather take basket weaving than biology. So I appreciate your help and your support.’”

One controversy sounded careless, while the other sounded deeply personal. And that’s how interesting the SEC is, even in the offseason.

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