This is an opinion column.

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Lane Kiffin, wretched sports heel, is actively trying to sabotage the greatest season in Ole Miss football history.

It’s detestable, abhorrent behavior, and it needs to be stopped immediately by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey.

Kiffin was the coach at Ole Miss before leaving after the season for LSU. Now he’s out to kill his old team just as the Rebels are one game away from playing for a national championship. It’s disgusting and the SEC should be ashamed. The league was overrated this season and the one team to break through is getting kneecapped behind the scenes by a rival back home.

Two things have happened since Ole Miss upset Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. One, America has united in its support for the Rebels and coach Pete Golding. Second, Kiffin has been dragged mercilessly for leaving a team that can win a national championship.

But now it’s so much worse. Kiffin is forcing all of his assistant coaches who stayed back at Ole Miss to leave the team like a bunch of dead-beat daddies on Christmas Eve.

Nasty stuff.

America’s hate for Kiffin grows by the hour, and it’s only going to intensify this week with the Rebels playing Miami in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff.

In a plot twist for the ages, the Ole Miss Rebels are now America’s team, and there is no one more loathsome in the long arc of the SEC than the new coach at LSU.

Kiffin the Wag.

Kiffin the Knave.

Kiffin the Cad.

Lane Kiffin, the Scamp of Decamp.

Kiffin hired away eight assistant coaches from his former team. Many of those lieutenants were allowed to stay behind at Ole Miss for the playoff run. That was so last week, though. Now Kiffin is blaming the transfer window for forcing his assistants to remain in Baton Rouge after Ole Miss’ victory in the Sugar Bowl.

Don’t be fooled. Kiffin isn’t shorthanded. There are dozens of backstage staffers and assistants who can help Kiffin at LSU. This ruse is all cheap contrivance from an attention whore who is being made to look like the most foolish man alive.

The shame police from Game of Thrones should follow Kiffin around all year ringing that bell.

Shame. [Dong-dong!]

Shame. [Dong-dong!]

Shame. [Dong-dong!]

I’ve never written the word dong so many times in my life. Only Kiffin. The spirit of college football is officially rotten to the bone.

It’s time for Sankey, commissioner of the SEC, to step in and do something. Save Ole Miss. Save college football. Salvage for the SEC a little dignity before Captain Castigation of Dong-Dong Shame Parade ruins everything.

I’m sure that a psychotherapist could diagnose exactly what the heck is wrong with Kiffin. I’m no expert, but I’m sensing a pattern of self-destructive tendencies.

Raiders owner Al Davis called Kiffin a con man. Davis had it right from the beginning. Kiffin then walked away from Tennessee after one season. It caused a riot on campus. They got wise and tarmac’d Kiffin at USC. He was then fired on the eve of the national championship at Alabama.

Kiffin’s brand of cowardice is hard to watch, but this treacherous business of backstabbing Ole Miss is the flaming burrito supreme of all self-immolation.

Good coach. Smart guy. But one sick puppy.

Who skips town on a team before the playoffs to go coach a principal rival? Some people are made to be heroes of American sports. Some people become choke artists. Kiffin is a sports villain all his own after this. But he didn’t act alone, apparently.

On the advice of Nick Saban, Kiffin says he left a potential national champion because he would have a better chance of winning a national championship at that team’s hated rival.

There’s a reason that sounds like the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard. That’s because it is.

Ole Miss is now two victories away from elevating Kiffin to the status of the biggest sports donkey we’ve ever known. And I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that Saban advised Kiffin to leave Ole Miss for LSU.

Saban should have sat that one out.

Sankey, it’s time to step in on behalf of Ole Miss’ players and give these guys the best chance possible to win it all. Make the call. Tell Kiffin the assistant coaches stay with Ole Miss until the run is over.

You’d think from a safety standpoint alone that Kiffin’s corruption of Ole Miss wouldn’t be allowed to continue.

Is Sankey going to allow under-prepared players to take the field without their coaches? It’s already an absurdly bad look for the SEC, but it could be so much worse.

College football is a gloriously messy sport, but Kiffin is making the SEC look like a trailer park in a flood zone. It’s embarrassing, but it’s also potentially dangerous.

Ole Miss-LSU is now the biggest rivalry in the SEC, but all that can wait. I even know LSU fans who are cheering for Ole Miss this week.

As an unbiased observer, I’m not supposed to root for a team. This once, though, I’m putting all that aside. The country stands together with Ole Miss out of disgust for Kiffin.

Please, Ole Miss, go win it all and light Kiffin’s career on fire.

MAILBAG SOUND OFF

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