Ole Miss wants clarity from Lane Kiffin. He’s not in a position to give it

Tension rises in Oxford and Lane Kiffin attempts to diffuse it with a friendly interview.

A day after wild scene of plane tracking and Kiffin family members caught on camera visiting Baton Rouge, Ole Miss head coach appeared on the Pat McAfee Show to put on a forced smile and try to calm the waters.

If you really wanted clarity, this wasn’t the series for you. The most notable point was Kiffin denying that Ole Miss administrators ever issued an ultimatum that he had to make a decision before the Egg Bowl.

“There was no ultimatum, anything like that,” Kiffin said. “And so I don’t know where it comes from, like a lot of things that come out. Like I said, man, we’re having fun. I love it here.”

That’s apparently true — no source CBS Sports spoke to used the word “ultimatum” — but there’s more to the story than just what Kiffin said Tuesday. What had been brewing behind the scenes for weeks finally came to light Monday after the unprecedented situation involving family members of a sitting head coach, including his ex-wife Layla Kiffin, taking a private plane for a campus tour of a rival school he considered working with it. There had already been a similar visit to Gainesville the day before, sources told CBS Sports, but the public nature of LSU’s efforts sent the college football industry into a tizzy and made Ole Miss boosters furious at how brazen it all was.

Why have members of the Kiffin family traveled to Florida and LSU in recent days? It all comes back to the fact that Ole Miss wanted clarity on the Kiffin situation, according to sources, and that Lane recognized it was no longer possible to put off a decision until after the Rebels’ season.

For weeks now, sources have told CBS Sports that while Ole Miss is confident Kiffin won’t stay in Oxford long, it won’t let him coach in the College Football Playoff. Of course, thinking this and even expressing this feeling is different from actually doing it and accepting all the complications that come with it. But there has been a real conversation within the Ole Miss athletic administration.

It may seem crazy to think that Ole Miss wouldn’t let Kiffin coach in the postseason — much like the school’s preference for clarity before the Egg Bowl — but in many ways it was years in the making, dating back to Kiffin’s very public dalliance with the 2022 Auburn job.

Kiffin has since admitted he made mistakes in how he handled Auburn’s interest in him. The willy-nilly drama derailed Ole Miss’ season and left a bitter taste in the mouths of Ole Miss administrators, boosters and fans.

In some ways, Kiffin almost took the Auburn job and helped bring Ole Miss to that moment. This prompted a NIL fundraising campaign to compete with Auburn’s perceived larger war chest. Ole Miss fans rallied to do and give everything they had to keep Kiffin in Oxford, to show him he could have the resources to win big. It was still tough at times, especially when an 8-1 season imploded into an 8-4 finish that included an embarrassing Egg Bowl loss to Mississippi State.

In a scene first reported in my book “The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Era of Chaos,” a prominent promoter promised to contribute $500,000 to the NIL fund if Kiffin remained at Ole Miss. And after the loss to Mississippi State, the promoter presented an updated offer: “I’ll give $500,000 to leave.” That’s how frustrating the whole process was in the end, and this booster wasn’t the only one who thought that.

All the victories over the next three years made Kiffin the celebrity of the day at Oxford, but that scar tissue didn’t go away. Ole Miss administrators were deeply frustrated with the way Auburn’s distractions derailed this potentially special season, sources say, and that appears to be having an impact on not wanting it to happen again, even though it worked for Ole Miss the first time. The frustration isn’t limited to athletics either, as academics have expressed frustration in recent weeks with Kiffin’s hold on the school.

There are also the very real scheduling issues that would arise if Kiffin left for another program in January. With an early signing period beginning Dec. 3 and the transfer portal window opening Jan. 2, Ole Miss would be at a significant disadvantage if it lost Kiffin after, say, a quarterfinal or semifinal game in early January. If there’s no way to change Lane’s mind — and so far, Lane has continued to tell people he hasn’t made a decision, according to multiple sources — Ole Miss is willing to turn to quarterbacks coach Joe Judge (the former New York Giants head coach) or defensive coordinator Pete Golding as interim coach and launch a coaching search, sources say.

That’s not ideal and is the source of much of the angst and frustration that Ole Miss fans are now directing toward Kiffin.

Everything Kiffin and Ole Miss administrators and boosters dreamed of doing together at Oxford is happening this season. The Rebels (10-1) are all but guaranteed to make the playoffs and could even get a bye, or at least a first-round home game, if they can beat Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl. This is supposed to be the culmination of all the blood, sweat and money spent to make Ole Miss a legitimate national contender. This should be the highlight and, instead, Kiffin’s very public flirtation with two rival SEC schools sucked all the oxygen out of the room. It’s not entirely Kiffin’s fault: College football’s brutal schedule has put him in the personally enviable but impossible position of having to deal with outside interests while trying to finish the season.

Kiffin is a mercurial menace in many ways, college football’s version of Loki. All this trolling is a lot of fun when you think you’re in on the joke. When you think you might be the target, those feelings can change in a second. That’s what’s happening right now with Ole Miss boosters and fans. They feel that the man who went to great lengths to prove that he has changed has returned to his old antics. They fear being played and that their hopes and dreams will be nothing more than fodder for Kiffin on social media.

Will they accept him if he decides to stay? Of course.

But Ole Miss is increasingly concerned that Kiffin doesn’t love the school as much as he publicly claims. He has complained, publicly and privately, about the fan base – including a Saturday night photo of the crowd for The Citadel game. He has long been enticed by the idea of ​​coaching a true blue blood again, an opportunity that LSU and Florida are both very eager to offer him.

Perhaps, as one booster who knows Kiffin well said, he feels like he’s already done it all at Oxford.

“He runs it as his city,” the source said, “and there is no more pursuit for him. And he is a hunter. The pursuit is over because he has conquered it.”

Deep down, Ole Miss just wants to hear Lane say he loves it and he’s not leaving. But Kiffin, still unsure of what he wants to do according to sources, can’t say those words. He can’t tell McAfee out loud that he won’t leave Ole Miss, because that would be a lie. He could. In fact, multiple sources told CBS Sports last week that they think it’s more likely than not that Kiffin leaves, although there are always multiple “you never know what he’s going to do” caveats when it comes to him. Nothing’s really done until he signs the deal, no matter how many people tell you it’s happening, as Auburn learned the hard way three years ago.

And while Kiffin continues to fall back on his position that he doesn’t deal with these things in season — of course, that hasn’t stopped him from talking to other schools in season, according to multiple sources — it has put him on an island. In what is already a wild coaching cycleseveral of the biggest names have dropped out of the mix in favor of an extension and raise at their current school.

Curt Cignetti and Indiana. Mike Elko and Texas A&M. Matt Rhule and Nebraska. Rhett Lashlee and SMU.

If Kiffin wanted to do the same, he could. Ole Miss desperately wants him to.

But every day that passes without him doing so signals to people at Ole Miss that Kiffin could be out soon.

It’s not over yet. And some still cling to the dream that Lane will soon announce that even though Florida and LSU badly wanted him to come and save their programs, he remained at Ole Miss to finish what he started. It’s possible he could.

More than anything, Ole Miss just wants clarity.