Among all the Ole Miss football players, coaches and fans reveling in the postseason success of the Rebels, one of the happiest has to be Keith Carter, the school’s athletic director.
The victories over Tulane in the first round and Georgia in the Sugar Bowl have vindicated Carter and his then risky decision to cut ties immediately with Lane Kiffin after Kiffin had decided to take the coaching job at Louisiana State University.
Denying Kiffin the opportunity to coach the Rebels through the college playoffs reflected the sentiments of the Rebel faithful, who felt manipulated as Kiffin dragged out for weeks his decision over whether to take another job and then felt betrayed when he opted for one of Ole Miss’ biggest rivals.
Carter’s decision also made strategic sense in the long term. Allowing Kiffin to burnish his profile with a month’s publicity while coaching in the playoffs would have helped him lure away Rebel players to Kiffin’s new school. It would also have given him an extra edge in the national recruiting wars for players who will be on the field next year.
But there was a short-term risk in rebuffing Kiffin’s offer to coach in the playoffs. Had the Rebels lost to Georgia on New Year’s Day or, worse, been upset by Tulane in the opening round, there would have been a lot of second-guessing of Carter and probably some crowing from Kiffin. Kiffin had claimed at the time of his departure for Baton Rouge that Carter was ignoring the wishes of the majority of the Ole Miss players by turning the coaching reins over immediately to Pete Golding.
Instead, it was Carter who was vindicated by Golding’s success in leading Trinidad Chambliss, Kewan Lacy and a host of other Rebel players through an easy win over Tulane and a dramatic upset of Georgia, the only team to have beaten Ole Miss during the regular season. They showed that although Kiffin might have demonstrated his mastery of the transfer portal and player compensation by assembling a team that could make the playoffs, other people were more than equipped to motivate and coach those players. Admittedly it didn’t hurt that one of Kiffin’s most important assistants, offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr., was allowed to stay on in Oxford to call the plays, even though he also will soon be leaving to take on the same role at LSU.
There’s no telling how the Rebels will fare in the next round, when they face Miami in Thursday’s semifinal. They have become, though, the sentimental favorite around much of the country. Kiffin unwittingly deserves credit for that, too.
He left Ole Miss because he didn’t think he could win a national title there, putting his own interests over that of his players. Many would like to see such selfishness proven wrong.
