PALMER: Why would Kiffin leave Ole Miss? I have an idea

By Hunt Palmer

Lane Kiffin’s potential Oxford exit defies most logic.

Kiffin has said multiple times that money won’t be dictating his professional decision making. The general consensus remains that Ole Miss, LSU and Florida are all prepared to offer reasonably similar contracts.

This isn’t a money move. It’s about winning.

The tough part about that is that Kiffin has already reached the 10-win threshold that many have arbitrarily set for SEC teams to compete for a national championship. He’s a touchdown favorite to make it 11. He’s reached the part of the season he’s in the business to coach in.

So, why leave?

That’s the part I’ve spent time dissecting over these two weeks. Five years ago, no one would have batted an eye if Ole Miss’s coach had bolted for Florida or LSU. The sport basically allowed a small group of about a dozen teams with significant recruiting advantages to rule at the highest level.

The last 33 national titles have been won by 14 programs. All of them did it with four and five-star high school recruits, top 10 signing classes and the right coach.

Ole Miss doesn’t fit that profile. There’s a reason the Rebels have never been to Atlanta for the SEC Championship game. Well, that set of parameters and a fourth and 25 lateral play by Arkansas.

In 2025, the parameters have changed. We’re six days from a College Football Playoff that features Indiana, Ole Miss, Texas Tech and maybe Vanderbilt.

So, why leave?

My best thought is that Kiffin still believes the geographical and historical advantages at Florida and LSU trump The Grove Collective and his achievements in Oxford.

I’ll take Kirby Smart’s word for the next part. Players win games, not coaches. So, access to players is vital to contending for and winning championships.

Over the last four NFL Drafts, LSU has had 29 players drafted to Ole Miss’s 21. The bigger disparity, though, is that 13 of LSU’s 29 prepped in Louisiana, and only three of Ole Miss’s come from Mississippi. In the last four drafts, LSU has put four Louisiana prospects—Will Campbell, Malik Nabers, Brian Thomas Jr., Derek Stingley Jr.—into the first round of the draft.

Ole Miss hasn’t produced a first round pick from a Mississippi high school since Chris Spencer in 2005. That’s cherry picking a touch. Michael Oher and Peria Jerry are from Memphis where you can throw a regulation-sized football over the Mississippi state line. Johnathon Mingo hails from Mississippi and went seven picks into the second round two years ago.

Still, the point remains that the pipeline of Louisiana preps through LSU to the pros is steady. That’s not the case from Mississippi high schools through Ole Miss.

Kiffin likely sees his offense with Odell Beckham Jr., Jarvis Landry, Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, Brian Thomas Jr. and Malik Nabers on the outside. He sees Leonard Fournette, Jeremy Hill and Clyde Edwards-Helaire carrying the ball.

On defense, he sees DBU. Early signing period, late signing period, high school or portal, LSU has featured elite athletes in the secondary for three decades. So many of them hail from Louisiana, and the ones that don’t are annually drawn to the purple and gold like Mansoor Delane this season.

I can hear Ole Miss, “Wait a second. Last year, in the portal era, The Grove Collective organized and hauled in the best group of transfer talent in the country. We smashed Georgia’s collection of future first rounders on the field and set a school record with eight draft picks, one more than big bad LSU.”

Correct.

That was also in an NIL era that quite literally allowed collectives to pay any player any amount for anything. Ole Miss aligned and attacked that process brilliantly.

Now that the clearinghouse is involved, will that approach work as well? Can Ole Miss rely on Walter Nolan, Trey Amos and Princely Umanmielen to show up every December to man the defense? While possible, it feels less likely than four and five-star high school prospects from Louisiana showing up annually at LSU.

This top 10 offense Kiffin has cultivated features a quarterback from Ferris State, a tailback from Dallas by way of Missouri, and two leading receivers who were nice players at Penn State and Wake Forest. Kiffin and his staff have done a marvelous job of identifying them, recruiting them and developing them. That requires a lot more to go right than grabbing the next crop of Louisiana blue chippers.

Currently, there’s no head coach in place at LSU, and six of the top seven players in the state of Louisiana are still committed to LSU. That includes a pair of five-star prospects.

Compare that to Mississippi where Ole Miss, a top five team, has a commitment from one of the top 14 players in the state. Tennessee, Auburn, Alabama, Florida, LSU and Colorado have come in to snag players.

In the next cycle, Louisiana boasts a quartet of five-star prospects ranked in the top 18 players in the country. That faucet never dries up.

No coach in his right mind would abandon the transfer portal in this era, but high school recruiting is still a major piece to the roster building puzzle, and LSU advantages in that space still very much exist. It’s about marrying the two together.

Kiffin has never been considered a great recruiter. Not even good. But that’s what a staff and a support system are designed to help with. LSU’s collective and booster base helped land this top-ranked portal haul under the old guidelines.

Unquestionably, Kiffin’s run at Ole Miss has been better than LSU’s simultaneous results. The Rebels are on the doorstep of the CFP with the first 11-win regular season in school history.

Kiffin doesn’t have to doubt whether or not his current program can trade punches with the big boys. He crushed Georgia last season, held a nine-point fourth quarter lead in Athens this year, went to Norman and won and has taken two of three from LSU.

So, why leave?

Perhaps he feels that more direct access to homegrown future pros, 40,000 more seats in a home stadium and a brand more powerful in the national picture provides the margin to go from “in the fight” to “holding the belt”.

He’ll just have to leave the ring in this round to look toward the next fight.