No. 1 Indiana‘s 27-21 victory over No. 10 Miami Monday night closed out a forever unforgettable college football season, highlighted by the Hoosiers’ run to immortality and the Lane Kiffin saga, which dominated headlines over the last two months of 2025.

Nearly two months after Kiffin was officially hired at LSU, all eyes are pointed towards his first season in Baton Rouge. During Monday’s edition of ‘The Matt Barrie Show‘, ESPN’s Paul Finebaum claimed that Kiffin likely feels ‘vindicated’ over his move now that the season has officially ended.

“It’s easy and convenient to be critical of him,” Finebaum said. “As sloppy and as ugly as that process was, he’s gonna come out okay. It really came down to — if Ole Miss had made the Championship Game — it would have been problematic. They didn’t. That story’s over. It died in the desert. We’ve already talked about it.

“He’s stockpiled where he needed to stockpile for next season. That’s the most important thing. He’s ahead of the game. Had he been able to stay at Ole Miss and coach until last night or 12 days ago, he wouldn’t have been. I’m sure he feels vindicated today too in the most inarticulate way. But, that is true. Looking around the SEC, LSU is clearly moving up.”

Lane Kiffin has built strong portal class at LSU, poised for CFP run

While Ole Miss and newly-promoted head coach Pete Golding made a run to the Semifinals of the College Football Playoff, Lane Kiffin was busy building next season’s LSU roster through the Transfer Portal. As Finebaum alluded too, if Kiffin was able to coach Ole Miss through the end of its season, he would have been pulling double duty at both programs. No way would this have been a positive for LSU, which now makes all the sense in the world for Kiffin and his new program that he did not do that.

In his sixth and final season in charge, Kiffin led Ole Miss to an 11-1 record and its best regular season in program history. Following the Rebels’ Egg Bowl victory over Mississippi State, however, Kiffin answered the long-asked ‘will he stay, or will he go’ question by announcing that he’d be heading to LSU. The rest is history, and both programs now seem poised to stake their claim at the top of the Southeastern Conference next season.

Kiffin’s LSU Tigers and Golding’s Ole Miss Rebels will meet on Sept. 19 in Oxford, in a game that will surely be one for the ages.