Ole Miss used FBI for counterespionage after Lane Kiffin's departure
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Lane Kiffin's divorce from Ole Miss this offseason certainly got a bit messy.
His departure for the LSU job came ahead of the Rebels' College Football Playoff run, and he took quite a few assistants and players with him on his way out the door. After his exit made way for the promotion of defensive coordinator Pete Golding, the school wasn't taking any chances.
Walker Jones, the executive director of Ole Miss' NIL collective, said the program enlisted the FBI's help to make sure Kiffin hadn't bugged the team facilities.
“We actually had the FBI come through and walk the building for bugs and for everything,” Jones said during an appearance on the "Assorted Crackers" podcast, per On3's Shea Dixon. “We knew kind of what was in Baton Rouge, and we knew how they operated.
“I remember getting on my knees and looking underneath the desk, like checking for, is there some sort of bug in my office? Somebody was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘You just trust me. You don’t know this guy like I did.'”
A paranoid response from the Rebels? Perhaps, but it wasn't entirely unfounded. Reports at the time of Kiffin's departure indicated he was threatening to sabotage Ole Miss' playoff run if he weren't allowed to coach it, though he later relented and allowed some staffers to remain with the team in January.
“I guess that’s what you do if you’re the LSU head coach,” Jones said. “You try to destroy your opponent, your rival. So I guess that’s probably the way. Again, shame on me to think it was going to be anything other than what it was, but we battled and we were able to hold on to the majority of our roster and our players.
“What people don’t realize, too, is half the staff was going to LSU, so we literally had to have two different text threads, two different staff meetings. We had to ask coaches to leave the room. We had to have no hall room conversations, nothing written down, nothing written on the grease boards in the office, because half the staff, we literally were going to be competing against.”
All of the drama between the two schools this offseason has set up what should be a must-watch SEC opener between them as Kiffin makes his first trip back to Oxford since his ugly departure.
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This article originally appeared on College Sports Wire: Ole Miss used FBI for counterespionage after Lane Kiffin's departure
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