What Lane Kiffin Leaving Really Did to Ole Miss This Week

I’m not really sure anyone in Oxford expected the timing of all this. Ole Miss finishes 11–1, wins the Egg Bowl without much trouble, and everything looks lined up for a solid playoff position. Then Lane Kiffin leaves for LSU the next day. It all happened so fast that it felt like the season kind of paused for a second while everyone tried to figure out what this meant.

Right away, the big worry was the playoff committee. Mostly because of how they handled situations in the past. Josh Pate brought this up on Get Up earlier in the week. He said the CFP rules give the committee room to judge a team differently if someone important won’t be there for the postseason. Usually, that means an injured quarterback, but it doesn’t actually say it has to be a player. Coaches count, too. So that’s why the Florida State comparison came up again. People were nervous Ole Miss would get the same treatment.

Then there were all the rumors about assistants being pushed to decide quickly whether they were leaving with Kiffin. That part made it look even messier. When there’s that much movement on a staff in a short time, it’s natural to assume the committee might think the team isn’t the same as the one that went 11–1.

Before all of this, committee chair Hunter Yurachek even said they wouldn’t have a chance to judge Ole Miss without Kiffin unless the Rebels made the SEC Championship Game. Alabama beating Auburn closed that door. So there wasn’t going to be a “post-Kiffin” sample for the committee to look at.

But when the new CFP rankings came out, Ole Miss didn’t drop at all. They moved up from No. 7 to No. 6. It came down to simple results. Ole Miss won their game. Texas A&M lost theirs. The committee didn’t try to guess how the Rebels might look without Kiffin calling plays. They just followed the scoreboard, which honestly felt like the easiest way to handle it.

Ole Miss also moved quickly by promoting Pete Golding to head coach. And Charlie Weis Jr. came back to call the offense, which at least gave the committee something steady to point to instead of a total reset. Not perfect, but not chaos either.

Now the Rebels are sitting at No. 6 and in a good spot to host a first-round playoff game. It depends on who wins the conference titles. If Virginia beats Duke, they might come to Oxford. If Duke wins, it could be Tulane or North Texas.

The Rebels had 20-1 odds to win the CFP at BetMGM following the Egg Bowl win but fell to 30-1 odds after Kiffin’s announcement. Ole Miss is currently 9th in title odds at the sportsbook. The move was even more drastic at other Vegas books, with one oddsmaker moving the Rebels from 15-1 to 40-1. You can get Ole Miss at +2500 at SportsBetting.ag if you want to bet them to win it all. 

However, after a week that looked like it could get ugly for Ole Miss, things actually settled down pretty well. We will know for sure on Sunday, December 7, at noon ET when the bracket comes out, and sportsbooks will follow accordingly with their updated odds. Stay tuned…