Inside the final days of Lane Kiffin’s time at Ole Miss and his move to LSU

OXFORD, Miss. — Last month, as some of the biggest college football brands pursued Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin, a staff member polled the team’s assistant coaches about where they wanted to be in the 2026 season.

The coaches discussed four options: Remain at Ole Miss, where they had built a legitimate College Football Playoff contender; leave for SEC rivals Florida or LSU; or take over Florida State, which according to people with knowledge of the search, was making a stealth move to poach Kiffin.

The entire defensive coaching staff, led by coordinator Pete Golding, preferred to stay at Ole Miss, which was on the verge of its first 11-win regular season and CFP appearance, two sources told ESPN.

All but one offensive assistant wanted to leave for either Florida or LSU, which historically had enjoyed more success than Ole Miss but had fired their coaches after their teams struggled this season.

That meeting was indicative of the divided loyalties and uncertainty that defined one of the most compelling coaching searches in college football history, which threatened to not only derail the Rebels’ historic season but also captivated fans on three SEC campuses and around the country.

On Sunday, after days of mounting tension and uncertainty, Kiffin finally agreed to become LSU’s coach, abandoning an Ole Miss team that is 11-1 and holds the No. 6 spot in the CFP selection committee’s latest rankings.

Even worse for many Ole Miss fans, Kiffin departed for a program they consider its fiercest rival in the SEC.

«You’re not leaving to coach the Giants or the Dolphins or the Buckeyes,» a source familiar with the situation told ESPN. «You’re talking about going to a place that we will play [each of the next four seasons].»

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infamously dismissed him in a private terminal at LAX following an ugly 62-41 loss at Arizona State — Florida coach Will Muschamp sought to hire Kiffin as his offensive coordinator the next season. However, Muschamp was told by UF officials that the SEC office wouldn’t allow him to bring in Kiffin, according to two people familiar with the situation, and Alabama’s Nick Saban hired Kiffin a couple of weeks later.

Early on, Ole Miss officials believed Florida might be the biggest threat to lure Kiffin away because of his family’s connection to the Gators. His ex-wife, Layla, had moved to Oxford earlier this year to be closer to two of her children: Knox, a sophomore at Oxford High, and Landry, a junior at Ole Miss. Layla Kiffin’s father, John Reaves, was a star quarterback for the Gators from 1969 to 1971 and was later an assistant under legendary coach Steve Spurrier.

However, the Florida opening became Kiffin’s second choice, sources close to him told ESPN, once LSU fired Brian Kelly on Oct. 26, a day after the Tigers lost to Texas A&M 49-25 at home. While Kiffin was reportedly turned off by Stricklin’s involvement in the Florida program, he didn’t seem overly concerned about the political environment at LSU.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry was highly critical of athletic director Scott Woodward for leaving LSU on the hook for a $54 million buyout when Kelly was fired. Woodward resigned under pressure Oct. 30 and was replaced by longtime LSU administrator Verge Ausberry.

During his introductory news conference Monday, Kiffin revealed he had a «unique, great call with Governor Landry» during LSU’s recruitment of him.

«I could feel his passion and energy for the state of Louisiana and for LSU football,» Kiffin said.

LSU became more attractive to Kiffin once Ausberry was promoted, sources told ESPN. Saban, who guided the Tigers to the 2003 national championship and helped Kiffin resurrect his career when he brought him on as Alabama’s offensive coordinator from 2014-16, was complementary of Ausberry.

LSU brass interviewed Kiffin sometime in mid-November. On Monday, Ausberry said the initial interview with Kiffin lasted less than 90 minutes. When Ausberry called other LSU officials to pick him up, they were like, «Y’all finish, already?»

«It wasn’t a three- or four-hour meeting,» Ausberry said. «[Former LSU baseball coach and athletic director] Skip Bertman taught me that. Nick Saban taught me that you don’t ask great coaches, ‘What you gonna do on third-and-8? Tell me about your offensive game plan, tell me about your defense, tell me about who you’re gonna hire.’

«Here, it’s like, ‘What do you need to be successful? We want you to be our coach here. What do you expect from me as athletic director? What do you expect from LSU, and do you want to be at LSU?’ And that was pretty much the conversation.»

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«[Kiffin] had an opportunity to coach in the playoff, and that would have been to stay at Ole Miss, and he chose not to do that,» Carter told ESPN. «That’s his choice, and I respect that choice. But then we had to make a choice, and talking with the team and spending time with them, I think they know they need coaches to make a playoff run.

«I think they were very concerned about their position coaches and those types of things. But I think they understood when someone takes a job at another place — and not only another place, but one of our rivals and a team that will be playing in our stadium next year — I think that that’s something that nobody feels comfortable with.»

Carter told ESPN that he’d been weighing whether to allow Kiffin to coach in the SEC championship game because of the short turnaround. When it became apparent that Boyce and Carter weren’t going to budge on their position about the CFP, according to Ole Miss sources, Kiffin threatened to take his entire offensive coaching staff with him to LSU.

It was his last leverage chip in a tense standoff to coach in the postseason. Ole Miss staff members confirmed to ESPN that Kiffin told his assistants that if they didn’t go to LSU with him on Sunday, they wouldn’t have a job with him in the future.

By the time LSU administrators landed in Baton Rouge following the Tigers’ 17-13 loss at Oklahoma on Saturday, Kiffin’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, had been frantically trying to reach Ausberry. When the men finally connected, Sexton delivered the news that Kiffin was ready to take the LSU job.

The outcome of the Iron Bowl might have determined whether the Tigers would have to wait another week to introduce their new coach. Auburn rallied to tie the score late in the fourth quarter, but Alabama went ahead 27-20 with 3:50 to play.

After Alabama recovered a fumble at its 20-yard line with 33 seconds left, Kiffin’s tenure at Ole Miss was over.

«It’s a tough situation,» Ausberry said. «He loved that place. We were thinking about that timeline. Also, I got kind of nervous the night when Auburn tied Alabama in that game. Now, it might push us back a week, but we were comfortable.»

In fact, Ausberry said LSU didn’t have a problem with Kiffin coaching the Rebels in the CFP, as long as he signed his contract with the Tigers. Kiffin said in a statement announcing his departure that Carter wouldn’t allow him to coach, and added that he was willing to put guardrails in place to protect Ole Miss, but didn’t specify what they would be.

«It’s great,» Ausberry said. «It’s great publicity for our institution. You have a coach, coaching out there, coaching [in the] playoff, playing for a national championship, and being the next coach of LSU, so we had no problems with that.»

That was exactly the situation Ole Miss officials wanted to avoid — its historic CFP run becoming a month-long infomercial for LSU’s next coach. They also didn’t want Kiffin coaching their players once he left. The transfer portal opens Jan. 2, and it would have given Kiffin more time to potentially recruit the Rebels’ best players.

«The players were concerned about commitment and those types of things,» Carter said. «[With] this playoff run, we plan on this being a four-, five-, six-week thing. There’s just no way that that’s possible. I know that the scheduling and the timing and all that stuff is a part of the equation. But I’m just not sure there was any plan that was going to work that would allow the head coach of a rival school to be in your building and coaching your guys. We had to stand up for our program and what we thought was best.»

Late Saturday night, ESPN reported that Kiffin was signing a seven-year contract with LSU. A team meeting was scheduled for 10 a.m ET Sunday, where Kiffin would address the Rebels for the final time.

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ON SUNDAY, THE meeting was pushed back to 2 p.m. ET, as Ole Miss officials scrambled to figure out which assistants were leaving and staying. The Rebels were also working to name an interim coach. Golding would end up being hired as Kiffin’s permanent replacement before the team meeting.

«I got back to the office and said, ‘You know what? We’ve got a great solution to all this. Somebody that’s right here under our nose, that’s going to be the next great coach. He can help us hold this staff together,'» Carter said.

Kiffin encouraged Carter to meet with the team’s leadership council, according to Ole Miss sources, telling him that he wasn’t going to like what he would hear. But instead of telling Carter the team wanted Kiffin to coach in the CFP, the players said they were more worried about their position coaches staying and had grown tired of the drama surrounding Kiffin.

After the 30-minute meeting with Carter, the leadership council also met with Kiffin, Ole Miss sources told ESPN.

In response to the statement Kiffin issued announcing his decision, in which he claimed the players wanted him «to keep coaching them,» Rebels starting center Brycen Sanders, a member of the leadership council, posted on X on Tuesday: «I think everyone that was in that room would disagree.»

Linebacker Suntarine Perkins, another member of the council, added on X: «That was not the message you said in the meeting room. Everybody that was in there can vouch on this.»

Meanwhile, Layla Kiffin drove a white Mercedes into the parking lot behind the building about an hour before the scheduled team meeting. Golding paced on a sidewalk, talking on a cellphone for more than 15 minutes.

Kiffin was escorted out of the Manning Center 10 minutes before Ole Miss players met with Carter, Boyce and Golding there.

There were a few dozen fans and reporters gathered outside the building. Officers in three police cruisers were parked nearby, in case things got out of hand, as they did when Kiffin left Tennessee after only one season in January 2010. UT students burned couches and nearly rioted the night of his stunning departure.

As Kiffin and his son drove out of the parking lot around 1:45 p.m. ET, an Ole Miss student approached his black SUV and made an obscene gesture. It wasn’t the last one Kiffin would see that day.

A few minutes later, Ole Miss players started to file out of the Manning Center. One of them yelled, «It’s the Pete Golding era!»

By then, two planes owned by an LSU booster had been dispatched to pick up Kiffin, his family and the staff members who were joining him in Baton Rouge. The original rendezvous point was Tupelo, Mississippi, which is more than 50 miles from the Ole Miss campus.

On the way to Mississippi, someone told Ausberry that the flight was being diverted to Oxford’s airport.

«We’re going where? Oxford?» Ausberry said. «They’ll be shooting missiles at us.»

A few hundred Ole Miss fans lined the fences of the runway of University-Oxford Airport when the two planes landed. They booed the pilots, who could only laugh and wave. When someone asked Ausberry if he needed to use the restroom in the airport terminal, he said, «That’s OK, I’ll hold it.»

One by one, the Ole Miss assistants who were joining Kiffin arrived at the airport and were escorted to the planes in a black SUV. The fans booed their disapproval at offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr., passing game coordinator/receivers coach George McDonald and co-offensive coordinator/tight ends coach Joe Cox, among others. (LSU announced Tuesday that Weis will return to Ole Miss for the CFP.)

Layla Kiffin was booed loudly when she drove her Mercedes onto the runway.

«He is what we thought he was,» said Ole Miss graduate Taylor Cauthen, who stood along the fence. «He was gonna win, and we knew how he was gonna leave. I mean, it’s not surprising to anybody with any sense. He was gonna win games, and he was gonna leave, and it was gonna be bad.»

Cauthen, who moved back to Oxford in July, said Kiffin hijacked the Rebels’ historic season and turned it into a soap opera about him.

«He’s taken it from us,» Cauthen said. «He made it all about him. I think he wakes up every morning, looks at himself in the mirror, and tells himself he loves him. I think that’s who he cares about most. I think he cares about himself more than anything on this earth, including his family.»

Joe Ignatius, an Ole Miss baseball player from 1992 to 1996, watched in disbelief as Kiffin and his assistants left Oxford like diplomats fleeing a foreign country.

«I feel naive thinking it wouldn’t happen to us,» Ignatius said. «It just didn’t have to go this way. It could have been six great years going your way, thanks for what you did. But leopards don’t change their spots. And I got fooled, so not what I expected.»

Igantius said he felt the worst for his son, Bodacious, an eight-grader, who grew to love the Ole Miss football team.

Kiffin, along with his son, was the last person to arrive at the airport. By then, police were turning away fans because the parking lots were full. Kiffin used an auxiliary entrance, which had fire trucks and firefighters blocking the road to keep fans away. He was escorted down the runway by a state trooper and another emergency vehicle.

Once Kiffin pulled his SUV next to the plane, the Ole Miss fans gave him a full-throated sendoff. He was embraced by Ausberry, who was wearing a purple shirt, and climbed the jet’s stairs. There was no farewell wave to the fans.

«He got on that plane and was like, ‘Let’s go. I’m ready,'» Ausberry said.

Only a few hours later, defensive tackle Lamar Brown of Baton Rouge, an LSU commit and the No. 1 player in the 2026 class according to ESPN’s recruiting rankings, posted a photo with Kiffin on X with the caption, «Welcome home.»

During a news conference at LSU on Monday, Kiffin said he wasn’t surprised by the reaction of Ole Miss fans when he left.

«They ain’t going to the airport and driving from all over, OK, to say those things and yell those things and try to run you off the road if you were doing bad,» Kiffin said. «Time heals a lot of things, and having gone through this in this conference before, I sure hope that happens.»

Kiffin won’t have to wait long to find out. The Tigers are scheduled to open SEC play at Ole Miss next season.

On Monday at the Po-Boy Express in Baton Rouge, LSU fan Remi Brignac, his son Beau and their friend Jay Olinde were discussing the program’s future with Kiffin.

«We’re optimistic for change,» Remi said. «Finally got an offensive mind.»

Olinde, meanwhile, isn’t expecting a long-term marriage.

«I believe that he will bring the program back to where we expect it to be in Baton Rouge,» Olinde said. «But I also believe that as soon as he gets that done, he’ll leave for the NFL, coaching the Dallas Cowboys.»

ESPN’s David Wilson contributed to this report