When Lane Kiffin woke up for his final day as Ole Miss head coach, the only question remaining wasn’t his destination but whether the school would accede to his request he be allowed to keep coaching the team in the College Football Playoff.
Ole Miss predictably declined to do so, leading to a contentious statement from Kiffin on Sunday in which he claimed athletic director Keith Carter turned him down “despite the team also asking him to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance.”
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We now know what at least three of Kiffin’s former players think of that claim.
Two days after Kiffin boarded his jet to Baton Rouge, Ole Miss players Brycen Sanders, PJ Wilkins and Suntarine Perkins quote-tweeted his statement and claimed that the team did nothing of the sort during its final meeting with the coach.
Given Kiffin’s reputation for, well, let’s just say commitment to self-determination, it’s certainly interesting that three players are now coming out claiming that the coach basically lied about their desire for him to simultaneously oversee two SEC programs.
No one burns a bridge like Lane Kiffin. (Photo by Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images)
(Tyler Kaufman via Getty Images)
Despite some media members (who may or may not be friendly with Kiffin) urging Ole Miss to go along with Kiffin’s request, convincing a school to let the future coach of an SEC rival to oversee its first College Football Playoff run during a time that also includes the Early Signing Period for recruits was always going to be an impossibly hard sell. And Kiffin’s players allegedly wanting him around was the only compelling reason to give him what he wanted.
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So maybe we know more now about how Kiffin operates in an exit, something he has plenty of experience in, or maybe emotions are still raw after Kiffin left the program at a highly inconvenient time.
Either way, the Ole Miss players still have plenty of work ahead of them for the CFP under new head coach Pete Golding.
