Coach Lane Kiffin’s decision hangs nervously in the air at Ole Miss
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OXFORD, Miss. — Wearing an Ole Miss blue skirt and crimson top, Sarah Kathryn Sanders closed her eyes and blew out the candles on her 40th birthday cake.
When Lane Kiffin is your head coach, you start working every angle to keep him from leaving the Rebels. Hours prior to Saturday’s 34-24 come-from-behind win against Florida, Sanders wanted to avoid the ultimate loss to the Gators, who arrived searching for a new coach — with Kiffin atop their wish list.
“I blew out my candles and wished he would stay,” she said before catching herself. “If I tell you, does it not come true? Maybe, I actually wished he was going to go.”
Sanders laughed, holding an adult beverage in one hand and a cocktail of nerves and hope in her heart. At the entrance to her tailgating tent sat a life-sized cutout of Kiffin and his faithful companion Juice, an English Labrador.
“He’s not going to leave,” Sanders concluded. “What he’s built here, his family is here. … He can stay two more years and go after we win a national championship. Then he can go to Florida and Knox [his son and local high school star quarterback] can go, too.”
Take a pregame stroll around The Grove — the iconic tailgating playground at Ole Miss — and there are signs, literally and figuratively, of what is at stake.
A hand-painted banner reading “Get Your Own Coach!” urged Florida to find another option to replace Billy Napier.
Florida fans, including governor Ron DeSantis, made the trip determined to bring home Kiffin more than a win. A UF faithful wore T-shirts reading, “Just Here To See Our New Coach.”
But the Rebels and their supporters aim to keep Kiffin in Oxford, where he has made the No. 7 Rebels (10-1, 6-1 SEC) relevant and a winner in the nation’s top football conference. Ole Miss rode a 14-point fourth quarter and second-half shutout of the Gators (3-7, 2-5) to upend a program with far more tradition and brand recognition, among UF’s key selling points.
With the school’s first trip to the CFP one win away, Kiffin deflected questions about his coaching future.
“’I love what we’re doing here,” he said. “Today was awesome. To even talk about it right now would be so disrespectful to our players and what they did today.”
The affection from the fan base is mutual yet at times fickle.
After the Rebels’ 21st win in 22 home games since the start of 2023, the student section at sold-out Vaught-Hemingway Stadium chanted, “We Want Lane. We Want Lane.”
In the past, Kiffin has questioned the student-body’s tendency to leave early, show up late or not at all. Ole Miss now doesn’t want to give him any reason to second-guess sticking around.
Florida provided the perfect foil to stir passions.
“Like I’ve always said, I wish our fans would be the way they are at LSU again because they hate LSU,” Kiffin said. “So I guess we got them to hate Florida this week, so they came with a little different — not Mississippi nice like they do sometimes. That was really cool.”
With Mississippi nice has come patience among die-hard fans.
“We have high expectations, but we actually know how to lose, too,” Rebels fan Todd Morris said. “He could stay here and change the name of that stadium.”
Kiffin has delivered an unprecedented run at a place accustomed to pockets of success. The Florida win gave Ole Miss three consecutive 10-win seasons for the first time in program history
Morris has ridden the peaks and valleys at an SEC outpost routinely viewed as second tier in the nation’s top football conference.
The 63-year-old was born two years after the school’s sole national title, in 1960, and a year before the school’s final SEC title, in 1963, under iconic coach Johnny Vaught. Morris was 6 when he first saw Archie Manning quarterback Ole Miss.
If Kiffin stayed put and on a similar track, Morris believes he could become a Manning-like legend.
Kiffin has signed three straight top-25 recruiting classes but made an art of mining the transfer portal, landing a top-three class each of the past four seasons.
“With the system now, you can win big anywhere,” Morris said.
Kiffin himself has evolved.
Once a prideful, at times reckless, wanderer, the 50-year-old has become a peaceful warrior enjoying his longest stint at one school.
Nearly five years sober, dedicated to yoga and health, and re-committed to raising his three children, Kiffin has prospered at Ole Miss. He also experienced the death of father Monte in July 2024 and of mother Robin this past June after the couple had moved to join the older of their two sons.
Oxford offered Kiffin a collective embrace after his parents’ passing.
“The community took him in,” said season ticket holder Dan Williams, who made the three-hour trek from Natchez. “It’s going to be something, really, if he leaves. It really will.”
While cheering their Rebels passionately, fans set aside the reality they could be watching Kiffin’s final home game.
“Right now we do, but we just want a real answer: Is he going to stay or is he going to go?” said Pat Midland, who has attended games for more than 30 years. “I know he can’t answer that until the season is over with, but I wish he would come on out and say, ‘Hey, I’m staying.’ It’ll make us feel better.”
Kiffin enjoys the spotlight and stirring it up on social media. But he is laser-focused on capping the most promising season in 14 as a college head coach.
Work remains, beginning with the regular-season finale Nov. 28 at rival Mississippi State in the storied Egg Bowl.
Upsets in the Egg Bowl, the in-state rivalry game dating to 1901, include Kiffin’s 20th-ranked Rebels losing in 2022 and Dan Mullen’s fourth-ranked Bulldogs falling in 2014 and his 16th-ranked team’s loss during his final game in 2017 before he himself left for UF.
A loss by Ole Miss in two weeks to Jeff Lebby’s much-improved squad could knock the Rebels out of the CFP and Kiffin immediately available for hire. He also could decide he has unfinished business in Oxford and ink a contract extension already reportedly awaiting his signature.
Kiffin’s decision is anybody’s guess, perhaps even for the coach.
“I don’t really think he’s leaving,” Williams said, “But you never can tell about Kiffin. He may go to Florida and leave in three years, too. I’m just saying, the grass is always greener on the other side to him at some point. It may change back the other way, but that’s the way he thinks.”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com
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