It might seem like a dark time in Oxford, Mississippi, since Ole Miss failed to reach the new 12-team college football playoff, and one of the best quarterbacks in program history, Jaxson Dart, will be leaving for the NFL, but they still have head coach Lane Kiffin.
At the start of the season, the Rebels were favored to make the college football playoffs, but after two bad SEC losses, Kentucky and Florida, and an okay loss to LSU, Ole Miss had no path to the postseason.
While many Ole Miss fans are upset that they will not be competing for a spot at the title, they need to realize that Lane Kiffin is starting to build up a winning program. In the next few years, they could compete with Georgia as the top team in the SEC.
Since Kiffin became the head coach of the Rebels in 2020, the program has quickly been on the rise and has put itself as one of the best teams in a difficult SEC and even though they suffered one more loss this season than last year, Ole Miss showed signs of improvement as a program on and off the field.
Mississippi doesn’t mess around when it comes to getting players out of the transfer portal. Last off-season, they went on a shopping spree, bringing in a few star players who would help them become contenders in the SEC.
Lane Kiffin was always getting knocked by the national media when is he going to win a big game, and this season, he won two pretty giant ones, beating the best team in the SEC, Georgia, 28-10, and South Carolina, the hottest teams in the sport, 27-3.
Watching Ole Miss drop games to Kentucky and Florida is frustrating, and losing to opponents that are not even or hardly bowl-eligible has to stop if the Rebles want to make the playoffs shortly; one thing Kiffin has done is create a team that can compete with anybody in the country and wins over Georgia, and South Carolina proves that.
Lane Kiffin might’ve made mistakes in his first go around as college football head coach at Tennessee and USC. Still, ever since he was able to spend time at Alabama coaching under Nick Saban, he learned how to win and two coaches that also coached under Saban, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart and Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian, just met in the SEC title and all three of them have the same mindset when it comes to winning at an elite level in college football.
There was a reason Kiffin’s name was mentioned this season as the number-one candidate for the Florida job if it opened up. Still, the Gators are sticking with Billy Napier for another season, so Lane Kiffin will return to Oxford.
Ole Miss will be a winner, and just because it didn’t happen this season doesn’t mean it will never happen. You shouldn’t bet against Kiffin. Players love playing for him, and coaches love coaching with him, and the program will be just fine moving forward.
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