It’s a bye week for No. 7 Ole Miss as it prepares for its annual Egg Bowl rivalry game against Mississippi State.
Without a game this week to focus on, a lot of attention will be on the Rebels’ head coach and whether or not he’ll stay in Oxford after this season.
Everyone has their opinion and the only person that truly knows what’s going to happen is Lane Kiffin himself. Frankly, it wouldn’t be surprising if he didn’t know either.
But the time for a decision is fast approaching.
College football coaching hires usually get announced in the days after a team’s season ends. So, for teams like Penn State, Virginia Tech, LSU, Arkansas and Florida, that final game will come next week.
Then another week later, the early December signing period begins and not many top recruits will sign with a college that doesn’t have a head coach hired or announced.
A decision doesn’t need to be made this week, but the time for a decision is coming up.
What should happen next?
College Football Insider Josh Pate would agree if he read this, based on his comments Sunday on the Josh Pate’s College Football Show.
“Lane Kiffin’s got to decide on something here. Ole Miss has got to decide on something here. I’ve got a lot of people asking me, ‘Hey, is Lane going to Florida?’ I don’t know. I don’t think he does. … I can not tell you definitively what’s going to happen with Lane Kiffin. I think he, No. 1, doesn’t know 100 percent what he’s going to do, again, contrary to message board rumor. Maybe he thinks he knows. It’s not time to make a decision yet is my point.”
Pate then goes to explain what he thinks Ole Miss should do and that’s basically do what Texas A&M just did with Mike Elko.
“This is how I would be if I were Ole Miss, if I were (athletics director) Keith Carter, if I were the big-money people there, knowing full well I’ve given this guy everything he needs, everything he’s ever asked for. There are very few ‘nos’ that Lane Kiffin has gotten in Oxford, Mississippi,” Pate said on his show. “At some point I’m getting an answer from him and it’s going to happen before the Egg Bowl. I’m putting a new contract in front of him, everything he says he needs is on this piece of paper. And he’s either going to sign it and we’re going to move on and the noise is going to die down and we’re going to put out a big announcement right before we play Mississippi State like A&M did with (Mike) Elko yesterday. Or we’re going to understand we’ll wrap up this regular season and then we’ll go on our separate ways.”
How the CFP adds more drama
That last sentence brings up the most intriguing part of all this Kiffin-to-Florida/LSU drama.
If Ole Miss doesn’t make the playoff and goes to a bowl game, then it’s easier to see how Kiffin leaving would work. Pete Golding would likely be named the head coach for the bowl game while Kiffin starts a new job.
But what if Ole Miss makes the playoff? Would Ole Miss let Kiffin coach the Rebels in the playoffs if he decides to leave Oxford? Pate doesn’t think so.
“If I’m not good enough for you to stick around in the future, then you’re not good enough to stick around here when it comes playoff time,” Pate said. “That’s the way I would be. You’ve got to be selfish at some point. You’ve got to look out for your best interests at some point.”
That’s why my opinion has been this: if Ole Miss makes the playoff, Kiffin isn’t leaving. If Ole Miss doesn’t make the playoff, all bets are off.
You can check out Pate’s comments in full in the video below.
