When No. 6 Ole Miss takes the field Thursday in the Fiesta Bowl — the first semifinal in the College Football Playoff — it will be the fourth straight game the Rebels have played with a coaching staff that doesn’t fully belong to them.
On Nov. 28, Ole Miss won its annual rivalry against Mississippi State, blowing out the Bulldogs 38-19 in the Egg Bowl. The win capped an 11-1 regular season for the Rebels and effectively clinched a berth in the College Football Playoff.
Two days later, however, head coach Lane Kiffin announced he would leave the school for the same position at conference rival LSU — and he hired six assistants to go with him.
While the school denied Kiffin’s request to coach at Ole Miss through the end of the season, assistants who wanted to stay were allowed to, which means some of the coaches on the sidelines for its first two playoff wins were technically employed by the Tigers.
“You want to build a program to where it’s heading in the right direction, and one person, one player, is not going to derail that,” Rebels head coach Pete Golding said at a Fiesta Bowl news conference Wednesday when he was asked about dealing with the departures.
Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss takes a snap during the game against Georgia.Nick Tre. Smith / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Golding was the team’s defensive coordinator under Kiffin and was hired as the full-time head coach after Kiffin decided to leave.
“There’s been too much investment in that, and it’s been aligned correctly that one person is not going to impact something so drastically. If it is, it’s probably not built right,” he said,
The Kiffin saga and the damage left in his wake haven’t derailed the Rebels so far.
After the team dispatched Mississippi State during Kiffin’s protracted decision-making process, Ole Miss has impressed in the postseason. The Rebels dominated Tulane in the first round and cruised to a 41-10 victory. In the quarterfinal, Ole Miss overcame a 21-12 deficit against Georgia, outscoring the Bulldogs 20-10 in the fourth quarter for a 39-34 win.
The victory against Georgia flipped the script from the regular-season meeting between the schools in October. In that game, the Rebels — under Kiffin — were outscored 17-0 in the fourth quarter and lost 43-35.
While Golding has held firm, the challenges in the front of him both on and off the field will increase in the semifinal.
Ole Miss will face a Miami team that has arguably had the two best wins of the playoff. The No. 10 Hurricanes are coming off back-to-back upsets: one on the road against No. 7 Texas A&M and another in the Cotton Bowl against No. 2 Ohio State. Miami has been dominant in the trenches, and it’s the only school of the four left that has defeated two Power Four teams in the playoffs.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines, the Rebels will be dealing with more departures.
While offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. and running backs coach Kevin Smith — both of whom have accepted jobs with Kiffin — will remain with the team for another game, tight ends coach/co-offensive coordinator Joe Cox and receivers coach/passing game coordinator George McDonald will not, according to Golding. Neither will offensive assistants Dane Stevens and Sawyer Jordan.
Golding has refused to let the uncertainty of the coaching situation be used as an excuse, pointing out that when he coached at Alabama, schools would poach coordinators all the time.
“That will not be any reason for our success or lack of success within this game,” Golding said at a news conference Saturday. “The play callers haven’t changed. There’s people in every room. Our players know what to do. It’s going to have no impact on the game.”
He added: “We’ve got a lot of coaches here. That’s the one thing about Division I football. This building is filled with guys that have been elite coaches everywhere they’ve been.”
