Kirk Herbstreit thinks Ole Miss should let Lane Kiffin coach the Rebels through the playoff even if he leaves for LSU. The ESPN analyst made his case Saturday on College GameDay, arguing the school needs to put emotions aside and let Kiffin finish what he started.
“I think if you’re in charge at Ole Miss and if Lane decides to go elsewhere, I think you need to set your emotions to the side,” Herbstreit argued. “You need to look at 2025 and this team with their coach and giving them a chance to finish this run, whoever that might be.”
Herbstreit also pointed to other SEC coaches getting new deals. Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz got his extension through 2031. Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea got his through 2030. But here’s what Herbstreit either didn’t mention or didn’t know, which is that Kiffin’s contract already rolled forward automatically through 2031 after Ole Miss beat Oklahoma in October for their seventh win. That’s how his deal with the Ole Miss Athletic Foundation works — it extends one year every time the Rebels hit seven regular-season wins. So the lack of a big new contract announcement doesn’t necessarily mean what Herbstreit thinks it means.
“If he were going to stay at Ole Miss, Eli Drinkwitz has already re-upped, Clark Lea has re-upped, don’t you think we would’ve already seen he was re-upping and staying at Ole Miss?” Herbstreit asked. “So chances are he’s going to Baton Rouge. I think Ole Miss has to accept that and look at this as a magical thing. You’ve never done what you’re doing right now. Let Lane Kiffin — if he leaves — and these players finish the run this year.”
It’s the kind of thing that comes off great on TV because it sounds player-friendly and reasonable. Heck, Booger McFarland made the exact same argument not 24 hours beforehand. But Booger McFarland isn’t Kirk Herbstreit. And this argument isn’t logical when you remember how college football actually operates.
In Herbstreit’s eyes, Ole Miss should let a coach who just accepted a job at a conference rival stick around for another month with full access to everything. They should let him recruit your own players to leave with him. They should let him maintain his recruiting relationships while your commits wonder where they should go. They should let their assistants worry about their job security instead of preparing for the playoff.
Plenty of people across sports media saw the same problem with Herbstreit’s logic.
Herbstreit’s framing this as Ole Miss needing to set emotions aside. But there’s nothing emotional about recognizing you can’t let a coach serve two SEC programs at once. What Herbstreit’s really asking is for Ole Miss to ignore every competitive instinct it has because it would make for a better story. The Rebels admin should just let Kiffin stick around with full access to your program while he builds his LSU staff and recruits your players to Baton Rouge. They should just trust it’ll all work out.
That’s not how any of this works. That’s not how any business works when someone leaves for a direct competitor. And college football is absolutely a business, even if we like to pretend otherwise when it’s convenient.
Ole Miss is 11-1 and heading to the playoff for the first time ever. It’s the best season in program history. They built something special. And now they’re stuck watching their coach likely leave for a conference rival, with Herbstreit suggesting they should just smile and let him keep coaching because the players want it. The players do want it. But what the players want and what makes sense for Ole Miss as a program aren’t the same thing here.
And neither is pretending that is somehow a player-friendly take, either.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.