Lane Kiffin says he does not have a deadline to decide if he’s staying at Ole Miss after the 2025 season.
According to reports by the Athletic and On3, Kiffin had been told by Ole Miss that he needed to decide by the team’s regular-season finale against Mississippi State if he was going to stay or go coach somewhere else in 2026.
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Tuesday, in an appearance on the “Pat McAfee Show,” Kiffin said that was not true.
“That’s absolutely not true, there’s been no ultimatum, anything like that at all,” Kiffin said. “And so I don’t know where that came from like a lot of stuff out there.”
Kiffin is considered the leading candidate at both LSU and Florida if he decides to leave Ole Miss after the season. According to multiple reports, Kiffin’s family was in Gainesville on Sunday and Baton Rouge on Monday.
Ole Miss, however, has a better record than both Florida and LSU in 2025. The Rebels are 10-1 ahead of their off week on Saturday and will be in the College Football Playoff with a win over Mississippi State. Florida is going to miss a bowl game and LSU is 6-4 after beating Arkansas.
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It’s the third straight season with at least 10 wins for Ole Miss, as the Rebels have been consistently better than the Gators and Tigers since he arrived in Oxford. While Florida and LSU can sell him on far more success in recent decades, Kiffin has proven that Ole Miss can be a winning program too.
And we’re guessing we won’t have any clarity on Kiffin’s coaching future anytime soon. He hasn’t agreed to a contract extension with the school and has been non-committal about his future while also professing his love for Ole Miss all season.
“I grew up picturing I’d be at one of the elite blue bloods where you can sign top-five classes every year because of your in-state talent and facilities and tradition,” Kiffin told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger last week. “I wasn’t raised to think it was a program like Ole Miss, but I’ve also changed a lot over the years. I didn’t grow up thinking this was the final chapter of the story.
“Maybe it is.”
