Despite coming off their best season ever with an 11-win record, the pressure on Ole Miss HC Lane Kiffin is as real as it gets. The 50-year-old is juggling the desire to lead the team through the playoffs while LSU is aggressively pursuing him. However, he had faced a similar situation before when he walked away from Tuscaloosa. NFL HOFer Shannon Sharpe and Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson made sure to remind everyone.

“Let him finish a job. Let him finish what he started,” Ocho said on the 30th November episode of Nightcap. “Once the season ends, he should be allowed to go where he wants to. But don’t say, ‘Okay, if you’re going to LSU, you can’t coach the final game.'”

Sharpe went on to remind everyone that this is a major déjà vu for Kiffin, so he needs to act right.

“Coach Saban fired Lane Kiffin because he said he couldn’t be the OC,” Sharpe said. “He was focusing too much on being the head coach at FAU than on being the offensive coordinator at Alabama. And he let him go.”

Saban, the iron-fisted boss, was super frustrated with Kiffin juggling two jobs. He was Alabama’s offensive coordinator, but was already headhunting and assembling a staff for his upcoming role at Florida Atlantic. Saban apparently caught wind that Kiffin was spending too much time recruiting for his new gig instead of focusing fully on Alabama’s playoff run. Adding fuel to the fire, Kiffin was reportedly late to a staff meeting just before the team broke for the holiday.

One can imagine how that move didn’t sit well with Saban’s demanding style. In the end, Saban pulled the plug a week before the title game, naming Steve Sarkisian as the replacement. The stated reason was mutual, but it looked more like Saban had finally had enough. Despite their past, even today, the two share a mentor-mentee relationship. That’s why, even recently, Saban had a strong message for the Rebels HC around the entire saga.

“I think you have to be upfront and honest with your team about things like this. Anytime we had a disruption or a distraction, I brought it up to the team and I challenged them to handle it in a mature way,” Saban told Pat McAfee on his 26th November show.

Even Ole Miss AD Keith Carter and Chancellor Glenn Boyce made it clear Kiffin couldn’t string the program along while eyeing LSU. They were even ready to throw him an extension that would keep him locked in through December 31, 2031, with that extra year alone being worth $9 million, including a $7.2 million guarantee. On the flip side, the LSU offer is far more enticing at this point.

It’s a huge decision, as Fox’s Bruce Feldman reported Saturday morning, LSU has offered Lane Kiffin a seven-year deal, “in the neighborhood of $100 million.” The tension is real. LSU basically slid a golden ticket across the table to Lane Kiffin and said, ‘You in or not? ‘ Additionally, there is a massive NIL war chest that could top $25 million a year for roster building. It makes him one of the sport’s highest-paid coaches. But with this, Ole Miss’s playoff hopes are at stake.

If Kiffin bails right now, the playoff committee could easily knock the Rebels down a notch. They dinged Florida State a couple of years ago when their starting quarterback went down. Plus, there is a new sense of fear that the Rebels might lose some of their best next season.

Lane Kiffin exits Oxford with a stern warning

Kiffin just delivered the first 11-win regular season in the program’s 120-year history; he’s basically one of the hottest names out there. To make the Rebels HC special, LSU even sent two planes to Oxford to pick him up. Ocho even pointed out that the plane might not just be carrying the 50-year-old.

“You know what’s funny when I think about it, too? The players that he recruited. Or went to Ole Miss, if he does leave for LSU, I’m sure they’re probably going to hit the portal and follow him,” he said.

Kiffin has leaned heavily on the transfer portal to the point where people call him the “Portal King.” And it’s not just the portal; his teams keep landing top-25 high school classes and top-six transfer classes, including the No. 1 haul in 2024. But all of that can go away from Oxford, along with Lane Kiffin.

According to an insider, the situation is more complicated than anyone expected, with Kiffin possibly trying to persuade top Rebels to join him in Baton Rouge. This would add salt to Ole Miss’s already raw wounds. This report was released just a few hours after On3 stated that Kiffin had a talk with the team on Sunday morning. No surprise there. He’s probably getting ready to convince a few guys to follow him to Louisiana.