Lane Kiffin walked into his first Southeastern Conference football media days event in 2009 as a 34-year-old coach at Tennessee.
He would be out of the league six months later, leaving the Volunteers after a turbulent 7-6 season for the head-coaching opportunity at Southern California.
On Monday afternoon, Kiffin took the SEC media days podium in Atlanta as a 50-year-old entering his sixth season at Ole Miss. The volatility of his brief stint in Knoxville has been replaced by a consistency level in Oxford that hasn’t been witnessed since the Johnny Vaught era some six decades ago.
“I’m honored to be here,” Kiffin said at the beginning of his 30-minute session inside the College Football Hall of Fame. “I don’t take this for granted. There are only 16 of these spots that we get to hold, and I have a lot of appreciation for that.”
Kiffin has a 44-18 record with the Rebels with five bowl trips, including two New Year’s Six bowl appearances, but simply reaching the postseason is no longer the objective.
Since 2021, Ole Miss has spent a part of each season ranked in the top 10, and the Rebels are 39-13 in that stretch. Among SEC schools, only Alabama and Georgia have more than those 39 wins.
The Rebels have posted consecutive 10-win seasons for the first time since 1959-60, and last season’s 28-10 thumping of Georgia inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium was the program’s biggest win since handing Alabama the only loss of its 2015 national championship season.
“When we got to Ole Miss, we had to sell to recruits what it was going to look like,” Kiffin said. “We told them we were going to win and have first-round draft picks. Now that we’ve done that, we’ve seen that impact the transfers coming in and the high-school kids, especially with the Mississippi kids staying home knowing they can achieve all these things that they previously thought they needed to leave for.”
Ole Miss has won 21 games the past two seasons and had eight players drafted this past spring, the most for the Rebels since the NFL went to a seven-round format in 1994. Austin Simmons is having to replace Jaxson Dart at quarterback, but Kiffin’s biggest offensive desire is a running game that won’t disappear in key moments like last season.
The Rebels play nine games inside the Magnolia State.
“We led the SEC in scoring offense and defense last season, and that’s really unique to do,” Kiffin said. “To me, that shows how good that team was. We played 13 games and won 10 of them by double-digits. Not one of those games was really close.
“We went 0-3 in one-score games, but that really does show how far we’ve come as a program.”
Opening woes
Since reeling off one of college football’s most impressive national championship runs in 2019, LSU has started the five seasons since with 0-1 records.
The Tigers fell to Mississippi State 44-34 in 2020, lost to UCLA 38-27 in 2021, succumbed to Florida State 24-23 in 2022 and 45-24 in 2023, and they lost 27-20 to Southern California last year. The past three opening setbacks have transpired with Brian Kelly at the helm, and the first challenge this year is an Aug. 30 trip to Clemson, the preseason bet to win the Atlantic Coast Conference.
“We’ve been 0-3 in openers at LSU under my watch, and we needed to do some things differently this year,” Kelly said. “We need to embrace this opener and embrace it in the manner that this is a big game. It’s a tangible goal for our football team to want to be 1-0.
“It’s not, ‘Let’s warm up into the season.’ We want to be ready for this football game, so we’re doing everything in our power to give our players the opportunity for that success.”
LSU’s journey to Clemson will be televised by ABC at 7:30 p.m., and it likely will pit two top-10 teams and a pair of Heisman Trophy quarterback hopefuls — LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier and Clemson’s Cade Klubnik.
“Those are the games you live for,” LSU junior linebacker Whit Weeks said. “That’s why I play football — to play in environments like that and play against teams like that. My motto is that in order to be the best you’ve got to beat the best.
“You don’t want to lollygag into the season. You want to get into a fistfight the first week.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.
Keep improving
Vanderbilt’s fourth season under Clark Lea contained an opening win over Virginia Tech in overtime, a closing victory over Georgia Tech in the Birmingham Bowl, and a monumental 40-35 triumph over top-ranked Alabama in between.
The 7-6 record resulted in the first winning season for the Commodores in more than a decade, but Lea’s challenge now is to keep pushing forward.
“We played eight games last season to one possession, and we were 4-4 in those games,” Lea said. “With this in mind, we’re as close to 2-10 as we are to 10-2. This is our reality, and as we strengthen, so too does our league. There is no easy pass, so we can’t just copy and paste our process from a year ago and expect to advance.
“To copy and past is to remain the same. To remain the same is to abandon the mission, and our mission is winning. We believe we have what it takes to play into January.”
Vanderbilt’s hopes for more success in 2025 begin with quarterback Diego Pavia and tight end Eli Stowers, and Lea is well aware of what the good times and bad times can feel like in Nashville.
“My first-ever game at Vanderbilt, we played East Tennessee State and got beat — and I mean beat,” Lea said. “I wasn’t prepared for that. There was no version in my mind of that being the starting point. I think about the Georgia game that season, and at the end of the first quarter it was 35-0.
“I remember the sun beating down that afternoon and thinking, ‘Here is your choice. Are you going to coach the team, or are you going to blame the team?’ That’s what you have to choose.”
Shula’s show
South Carolina was picked last summer to finish 13th in the SEC but then went out and went 9-4, demolishing Oklahoma 35-9 in Norman, routing Texas A&M 44-20 for a happy Homecoming, and surprising Clemson 17-14 in Death Valley.
The successful season resulted in Gamecocks offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains getting the head-coaching opportunity at Appalachian State last December, and South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer replaced Loggains with former Alabama quarterback and Crimson Tide coach Mike Shula. Beamer hired Shula as an offensive analyst in March 2024 before promoting him to senior offensive assistant coach before fall camp.
Shula’s offense will start with quarterback LaNorris Sellers, last season’s SEC freshman of the year who is being called “LaHeisman” by Gamecocks supporters.
“That was an easy decision for me to promote Mike as coordinator,” Beamer said. “He was part of our program last year. He’s literally been in the shoes that LaNorris is in now, as he was a starting quarterback in this conference. He’s also been in the shoes I’m in as a head football coach in this conference.
“He’s already made us better on and off the field. We’ve got to replace the interior of our offensive line and a lot of playmakers at the running back and tight end positions, but I’m excited about the potential of the guys returning and how we take the next step as an offense under Coach Shula.”
Shula was Alabama’s starting quarterback from 1984-86, guiding the Crimson Tide to a 19-5-1 record his final two seasons. He took over his alma mater following the abrupt dismissal of Mike Price and endured a 4-9 season in 2003, losing all six games decided by a touchdown or less, but his 10-2 season in 2005 that included a Cotton Bowl triumph over Texas Tech was the highlight of his 26-23 record in four years.
Most of Shula’s coaching career has transpired in the NFL, with his best run occurring from 2013-17 as offensive coordinator with Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers, who went 51-28-1 in that stretch and reached Super Bowl 50.
Sankey statements
The SEC led all conferences in attendance this past school year in seven different sports — football, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s soccer, gymnastics, baseball and softball. According to league commissioner Greg Sankey, the SEC had more softball fans at its venues than the other power conferences combined. … Sankey: “We’re going to continue to evaluate whether increasing the number of conference football games is appropriate for us.” … Sankey said the SEC and Big Ten combined for 70% of the linear television viewership last football season, with the SEC comprising roughly 40% and the Big Ten 30%. … Sankey said the SEC supports expansion to the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. … Sankey: “College athletics is not broken, but it is under stress.”