We may hear some actual news today about Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin and his coaching future.
On3’s Chris Low is reporting that Kiffin will meet with Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter around noon Friday.
While knowing anything with any amount of certainty is hard to come by in this saga, it’s a safe bet that meeting later today will be about Kiffin’s future.
What happens in that meeting will be probably be leaked later this afternoon, but this could a huge moment in this soap opera.
Best case scenario is we hear Kiffin told Carter he’s staying in Oxford and we should expect an official announcement Saturday morning.
Worst case scenario is if all we hear is that Kiffin is still going through his decision-making process and needs more time. Kiffin leaving would fall somewhere in between.
The report of the Friday meeting follows a previous report that Ole Miss had given Kiffin an ultimatum to make a decision by the Egg Bowl in seven days.
Kiffin then went on The Pat MacAfee show and denied those reports.
“Yeah, that’s absolutely not true,” Kiffin told “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN. “There has been no ultimatum, anything like that at all. And so I don’t know where that came from, like a lot of stuff that comes out there. Like I said, man, we’re having a blast. I love it here.”
Those last two sentences ring hollow when it’s said at the same time it’s widely known Kiffin’s family was in Baton Rouge and Gainesville the previous days.
Taylor’s Take
My gut feeling is that we’ll have a pretty good idea if Kiffin is staying or leaving by the time the sun sets Friday. It won’t be anything official, because I still think the best time to announce a contract extension would be on a Saturday you don’t play a game, but we’ll hear reports and rumors.
This meeting Friday could also just be a previously planned, check-in situation and nothing comes of it. But we didn’t hear about this meeting until Thursday. If it was earlier in the week, I’d be more inclined to think it was just a check-in meeting.
So, I do think this meeting Friday will be Kiffin informing Carter of his decision and I still lean towards Kiffin staying because he’s already got team with one foot already in the CFP doorway.
Which is a place neither LSU or Florida’s last coaches reached.
