The 2025 Ole Miss football season has completely exceeded expectations. They went all in on last season and barely missed the College Football Playoff. Now, they are on the cusp of making it this year; however, questions about Lane Kiffin have overshadowed their run, especially with an announcement coming on Saturday. If Kiffin decides to leave Ole Miss for LSU or Florida and Ole Miss loses against Mississippi State, then we get into uncharted territory.
Lane Kiffin is being pursued extremely hard by both LSU and Florida, and if he decides to leave, then we enter into territory we have never seen before with the College Football Playoff. On Tuesday's episode of “Get Up” on ESPN, Mike Greenberg asked Paul Finebaum if there is any chance Kiffin would coach Ole Miss through their playoff run if he decided to leave. Finebaum said no, and it seems Ole Miss has already signaled that if he leaves, he won't be staying afterward.
Finebaum said, “That would be a normal thing to think about, but it seems pretty obvious Ole Miss has told him, you’re not going to stay. I think the distraction would be immense. He would be recruiting, trying to get players on his own team to leave with us. I think that would be a disaster. But the idea of a coach leaving before the college football playoff, Greeny, we are way, way in unprecedented territory here.”
All the news about Lane Kiffin and whether he will actually leave Ole Miss has quickly become one of the biggest stories in college football, even overshadowing the actual games, conference title races, and the College Football Playoff race.
We have never seen a college football coach take a job while his current team was in the middle of a College Football Playoff push. If Kiffin did it, he would be the first, and it would move into uncharted territory.
Finebaum also made the point that even though it would be unprecedented for Lane Kiffin to leave, there is no reason why Ole Miss would want him there because he could recruit for his new job while he was there. To his credit, Kiffin has said that the Rebels are unaffected by the rumors, but how they play against Mississippi State will determine that.
