Lane Kiffin gone, but shadow looms over Ole Miss ahead of Fiesta Bowl

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Lane Kiffin has left Vrbo Fiesta Bowl-bound Mississippi, but his shadow looms large over the Rebels program as it prepares to face Miami Jan. 8 in the College Football Playoff semifinals.

Several Ole Miss assistants will join the former Rebels head coach at LSU at some point after Mississippi's final game. Kiffin, who left near the end of this season to take the Tigers' head coaching job, had hoped to coach Ole Miss in the CFP before taking his new job, but his request was denied.

The program was placed in the hands of former defensive coordinator Pete Golding, who has guided Ole Miss to consecutive playoff wins. Golding, on Saturday, Jan. 3, said he still is in contact with Kiffin and at any point in the Rebels' playoff run, the assistant coaches Kiffin hired away from Ole Miss could join him at LSU and start their new jobs.

"Of course it was crazy for everybody," Ole Miss wide receiver Harrison "Trey" Wallace said on Sunday, Jan. 4, following team practice, when asked about the sudden departure of the well-traveled Kiffin and adjusting to a new coach as his team looked ahead to the postseason.

"But at the same time, the players and the coaches did a great job of just keeping everybody together. In a situation like that, everybody's thinking certain things, what we're going to do and things like that," Wallace said. "But I feel like we did a good job of just communicating with each other. If you needed to talk about something, we did a good job of just sitting down and talking with some people, letting them express their emotions just so everybody could get back to the main thing."

Such drama with assistant coaches is nothing new to Golding. He's seen coordinators and assistants take other jobs and try to balance coaching duties for their current team with recruiting and now transfer portal moves for their new team.

"Everybody is targeting us on this," Golding said. "There's multiple teams that have coordinators, that have other jobs, they've taken head jobs everywhere else. Every year that I was at Alabama that we went to the playoffs, we had coordinators and assistants that had other jobs.

"So … they're doing two jobs. They have a responsibility to the next institution they're going to work at. It's the portal, the recruiting, they're doing other things. They're still doing the game plan prep, will be in the practices and all those types of things."

According to an ESPN report, six Ole Miss assistant coaches are at some point, whether it be right away or after the Rebels' playoff run, leaving Mississippi to join Kiffin's LSU staff. That includes offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr.

Preferably, the same staff members that have coached the same positions all year will do so in the Fiesta Bowl, Golding said. But in the wild landscape of today's college football, any of them can decide to leave the program since they are employed by Kiffin at LSU.

Golding has no idea when any of the LSU-bound assistants are going to leave, calling the situation "grown people making decisions."

An interesting admission from #OleMiss interim head coach Pete Golding, who talks about the coaches in his and many other programs that people don't know about who instruct players when asked if he knows when those assistants joining Lane Kiffin at LSU will leave for Baton Rouge. pic.twitter.com/4Ac68gSEdB

— José M. Romero (@RomeroJoseM) January 4, 2026

"They have every opportunity, like they have up to this point, to be able to make that decision," Golding said. "So, week in and week out, I don't dictate whether they do that or not because they're not employed by me."

The challenge of the moment is even greater for Golding and the other three head coaches in the College Football Playoff, with a coaching staff in flux and the transfer portal recruiting and visits affecting game preparation time.

Ole Miss backup quarterback Austin Simmons is reportedly headed to the transfer portal but will stay with the Rebels until their season ends. Simmons opened the season as the starter, but an injury opened the door for Trinidad Chambliss to take over, and Chambliss has been too good to remove from the starting job.

Golding is proud of how Simmons has dealt with losing his starting spot.

"He knows when he watches the tape that Trinidad is playing at an elite level," Golding said. "He's playing like the starting quarterback. And at any point, at any level of football, something can happen to that guy, and that next guy's got to be ready to roll. And we have all the confidence in the world that he would be ready to do that."

Chambliss was in the transfer portal himself a year ago, having shined at Division II Ferris State before choosing the Rebels. He's currently waiting for a decision from the NCAA on his waiver petition for an additional year of college eligibility.

"College football is great so far," Chambliss said. "The transfer portal is really well, I feel like NIL (pay) is really great for all student athletes across any sport and I think it's moving forward in the right direction."

Mississippi football has been able to weather what was quite a storm at the end of November when Kiffin made his quick and quirky exit, and after hammering Tulane 41-10 in the first playoff round, the Rebels won the thrilling rematch with Georgia in the CFP quarterfinals 39-34 on New Year's Day.

"There's a grit and toughness about this group to where, regardless of the talent level, regardless of what happens, whether we fumble and it's a scoop-and-score, whether we have a bust in the coverage, whether we mismanage getting out of bounds when we should or not, there's not a panic," Golding said.

"And there's a spot the ball, let's play the next play, let's learn from it, let's not get too high, let's not get too low, and let's go out here for the next 30 minutes and out-physical our opponent and execute really well, and then let's look at the scoreboard at the end."

José M. Romero can be reached at jose.romero@gannett.com. Follow him on X at @RomeroJoseM or Instagram at @romerojosem.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mississippi assistants prepping for Fiesta Bowl, working for LSU

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