Lane Kiffin Admits He Would Handle Ole Miss Departure Differently Today

Lane Kiffin's exit from Ole Miss was about as ugly as it gets. The longtime college football head coach left Ole Miss for an SEC rival, LSU, at the end of the 2025 regular season. Kiffin, who had led Ole Miss to the College Football Playoff, wanted to continue to coach the Rebels through the ...

by Andrew Holleran

May 20, 2026

Lane Kiffin looks on at NRG Stadium.

Lane Kiffin's exit from Ole Miss was about as ugly as it gets.

The longtime college football head coach left Ole Miss for an SEC rival, LSU, at the end of the 2025 regular season. Kiffin, who had led Ole Miss to the College Football Playoff, wanted to continue to coach the Rebels through the postseason, despite already taking the LSU job. Ole Miss very much did not want him to do that - and the Rebels didn't let him do it.

Kiffin was met at the airport, as he was leaving Oxford for Baton Rouge, with hundreds of angry and upset Ole Miss fans.

If Kiffin was doing it all over today, would he do it differently?

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin answers questions from the press after a college football game between Mississippi State and Ole Miss at Davis Wade Stadium in Starkville, Miss., on Friday, Nov. 28, 2025. Ole Miss defeated Mississippi State 38-19 in the Egg Bowl.

Kiffin admits that he would.

The LSU Tigers head coach appeared on Pardon My Take this week and he admitted that he would do things differently.

Kiffin says he would've just left right away

Kiffin says that if he was doing things today, he would've left before the College Football Playoff, without argument.

“Yeah, I think I would have just came in and said, okay, I’m leaving,” Kiffin said on Pardon My Take. “I’m very appreciative of everything. You know, I spent a lot of time right there fighting to coach the team, trying to keep everything together. Totally respect their decision … but I was trying so hard to keep that together, like, hey, let us all coach, let this whole thing, you know, let’s see if we can go win the whole thing. And so, obviously, that didn’t happen that way, which then created a lot of it, because that was the whole night and morning of that, and then what was going to happen, and then the team meeting moved back and all the things that went with it, and then you couldn’t have a normal team meeting, because at that time it had, you know, gotten into all that, and then you know, naming of Golding as the head coach.

“And so I mean, I don’t know how much it would have saved, just going in and saying, instead of trying to say, hey, I really want to go, hey, I’m not coaching, I’m taking the job … but I think you still would, you definitely would have had the airport scene, and all that.”

Ole Miss is set to host LSU in Week 3 of the 2026 season.