Ole Miss fans should enjoy the Kiffin ride

• For the third time in four seasons, Lane Kiffin shepherded Ole Miss to ten wins. Entering his sixth season next year, Kiffin has longevity and success on the gridiron unmatched by any Ole Miss coach since Johnny Vaught.

In team sports there’s no greater feeling than walking off the field after a win.

The current college football climate is challenging that theory, but for the most part it holds.

There’s a sliding scale, of course. It’s greater to walk off the field with a College Football Playoff victory than a bowl win against Duke, but it was evident the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl mattered to Ole Miss.

It mattered to Jaxson Dart, perhaps too much. The closest Lane Kiffin would come to criticizing his record-setting quarterback this year occurred ESPN’s postgame interview, when he said Dart “needed to learn some class” after Dart checked out of a run and threw a touchdown pass – his fourth – with the Rebels ahead 45-14 with 1 minute, 27 seconds left.

Dart wouldn’t have run up the score if his backup and next year’s presumed starter, redshirt freshman Austin Simmons, had been in the game, but that’s a column for another day.

The flip side: Dart loves Ole Miss. He was a high-profile transfer from USC, a Utah native, who took a chance and moved to an unfamiliar part of the country.

Things like that don’t always work out, but Dart survived a challenge from four-star high school signee Luke Altmyer. After a good, but not outstanding, sophomore season he saw Kiffin sign a backup plan, an established Big 12 starter in Spencer Sanders from Oklahoma State.

For the last two years, however, Dart was phenomenal, with 52 passing touchdowns to 11 interceptions. He ranked third nationally in total offense this season.

Duke was at an obvious disadvantage without its starting quarterback and running back, but it’s defense – which ranked among the ACC leaders in sacks and tackles for loss – was largely intact. When Dart was on the field it was “good on good” as Houston Nutt used to say.

So the game mattered to Dart, and that helped it matter to some teammates.

The question is did it matter to Ole Miss fans?

Modern culture, much of it, says championship or bust.

Kiffin had a championship roster. He embraced the transfer portal. The school’s NIL collective has responded.

You can do all of those things, and sometimes it still doesn’t work out, because, hey, thats football. For the Rebels, that day was in the SEC opener against Kentucky.

Ole Miss could never put enough daylight between itself and that loss. When the third loss came, it was the knockout punch it was thought to be that day in Gainesville. Still, the Kentucky loss was a hot talking point.

LSU was a better team. Florida became a better team. Both were difficult road environments. They weren’t Kentucky.

Collectively, those three were the only times Ole Miss left the field distraught.

The Rebels went 10-3 in 2024, winning 10 times – at least –for the third time in four seasons. That’s a stretch not seen since John Vaught in the 60s.

It wasn’t enough to get the Rebels in the playoff, but it got them something very important – stability.

Kiffin Tenure Entering Rare Ole Miss Air

Not a season has gone by since Kiffin’s hiring that did not include speculation that he’d leave for another job.

That may yet happen, but as of this writing Kiffin is preparing for his sixth season as Ole Miss coach. That will, for all intents and purposes, tie him with David Cutcliffe, though Cutcliffe, having been just hired, coached the Independence Bowl in 1998.

Since Vaught, only Billy Brewer has held the position longer, and that run included two sets of NCAA sanctions. Coaches have come and gone at an alarming rate.

There have been high moments and low, but at no point since Vaught has the program experienced the sustained success that it now enjoys.

Think about that. Ole Miss is in an era of stability while the sport is more volatile than it’s ever been.

When Kiffin was hired he’d had plenty of conversations with his brother, Chris Kiffin, who had coached defensive line on Hugh Freeze’s Ole Miss staff. Lane Kiffin had visited his brother and asked informed questions.

Chris Kiffin told his brother, “I think you’d crush it here.” He wasn’t wrong.

Kiffin came along in the window in which Mike Leach was hired at Mississippi State, Deion Sanders at Jackson State. The general consensus was that Kiffin would be the first to leave. Through unfortunate circumstances that have included Leach’s untimely passing in 2022, he’s the only one still here.

Lane Kiffin hasn’t been perfect, and there have been questionable moves this season, not all of them in-game. The handling of Ulysses Bentley comes to mind.

Then and Now

Kiffin had a playoff-ready roster this season and didn’t make it.

Last season he had a quarterback coming off an 11-interception sophomore year and won 10 times before controlling Penn State in the bowl game. Had the playoff been in effect last season, Ole Miss would have made it with a team that wasn’t as good as this one – the Alabama and Georgia losses are evidence – but with one that was more consistent.

If Kiffin remains, the parts and pieces will at some point come together, and he’ll make the playoff at Ole Miss.

It’s OK to feel the disappointment in 2024, and Ole Miss fans should never lose that hope in an environment Kiffin has created.

Until then, enjoy the wins and the stability.