TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Unearthed at Ole Miss after an offseason filled with tales of betrayal, unkept promises and how college football’s ugly underbelly can tear at the fabric of an institution comes this surprise from the new coach there \u2014 Pete Golding:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no ill will toward Coach Kiffin,\u201d Golding said Wednesday at SEC Media Days.<\/p>\n
Golding was the up-and-coming defensive coordinator who was asked to pick up the pieces when his old boss, Lane Kiffin, abruptly left for LSU just as the historically good Rebels were about to embark on their trip to the College Football Playoff last season. <\/p>\n
Partly thanks to the fact that the coach had two of the game’s most explosive players in quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy, Golding racked up two wins, and almost a third, in those playoffs. <\/p>\n
That made Mississippi’s decision to give him a five-year contract right after Kiffin’s departure look like a stroke of genius. It also gave Golding a spot at the podium in Tampa, where he opened up and entertained \u2014 and became an early favorite to \u201cwin\u201d the 38th version of the SEC’s annual preseason football gabfest.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the ex, right? There\u2019s always going to be the history,” the coach said. “Do you have an ex? Are you married? Well, if you do get married and you have an ex that your wife knows about, like, she doesn\u2019t ever end; she\u2019s never dead. <\/p>\n
“She\u2019s always going to get brought up, and so that\u2019s kind of where it is right now. That\u2019s always going to be there a little bit, which is fun to a certain degree.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fun, indeed. And it’s no sure thing that Ole Miss is going to take a step back from last year’s 13-2 record and its trip to the national semifinals just because its celebrity coach, Kiffin, has moved west. (By the way, Ole Miss hosts LSU on Sept. 19.)<\/p>\n
Chambliss is returning off a 3,900-yard, 22-touchdown season and a win in court, where he was granted a sixth year of eligibility. Lacy’s 73-yard touchdown run in Mississippi’s semifinal loss to Miami capped a playoff stretch that identified him as a first-tier threat. The Rebels have launched Heisman Trophy campaigns for both.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know they\u2019re really good players,\u201d Golding said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to talk to you about that. Ya\u2019ll already know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golding flicks away questions about tampering allegations<\/p>\n
Golding was equally colorful about tampering, a topic the Rebels were drawn into this offseason when Clemson’s Dabo Sweeney accused Ole Miss of unethically luring linebacker Luke Ferelli, who had barely moved from Cal to Death Valley when he suddenly bailed for Mississippi.<\/p>\n
Without getting into the details of the Ferelli affair \u2014 which served as a rare example of a coach calling out another coach for tampering \u2014 Golding pointed to one of the key problems about the transfer portal, saying it’s only natural a player would want to know he has a place to go before he leaves his current school. Add agents into the mix, who can easily circumvent rules that prohibit contacting the player, and chaos ensues.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy design it\u2019s put a lot of people in bad positions,\u201d Golding said. \u201cLet\u2019s not act like recruiting in college football for the last 100 years is the most moral thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golding is a new homeowner \u2014 it’s Kiffin’s old house<\/p>\n
When it comes to ethics and morals, though, the conversation down South seems to funnel back to Ole Miss these days. And Golding and Kiffin. <\/p>\n
Kiffin’s move, the pundits say, showed college sports’ money-grubbing opportunistic side at its worst. The much-debated bill circulating in Congres s hoping to regulate the industry includes what’s known as a \u201cLane Kiffin Rule” that restricts when coaches can leave for new jobs. <\/p>\n
It has made for great headlines. Golding’s reaction to it \u2014 golden, as well. And in a sign that all may truly be forgiven, ESPN reported that not long after Kiffin bailed for Baton Rouge, Golding bought his house in Oxford. <\/p>\n
He said he and Kiffin text frequently, and there’s a friendship there that goes beyond coaching. <\/p>\n
\u201cI can separate the two. Some people can\u2019t,\u201d Golding said. “I probably shouldn\u2019t say this, but I don\u2019t care, all right? Like I told an Ole Miss group the other day, \u2018In 2021, if you said you could look in 2025 and you\u2019re about to be 11-1 and go to the playoff, would you take it if your coach was leaving?\u2019 Hell yeah. You would.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody won from it. It\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Unearthed at Ole Miss after an offseason filled with tales of betrayal, unkept promises and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[318,331,7,49,48,2309],"class_list":["post-952729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-college","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-wires-bot"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116965669796281544","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}