According to CBS Sports’ Josh Pate, Lane Kiffin would not hesitate to take the Florida Gators job and leave Ole Miss in the dust if Billy Napier were to be fired sometime between now and the offseason.
“(Kiffin would leave Florida for Ole Miss) In a heartbeat,” Pate said during the September 11 edition of Crain & Company. “Lane Kiffin would walk to Florida if they would give him the job. This is not a debate. I’ve got Ole Miss people in my very close social circle and they fight me on this. They’re like ‘What can you do at Florida that you can’t do at Ole Miss?'”
Pate proclaimed that what can happen in Gainesville isn’t something Kiffin could ever realistically expect in Oxford.
“Win a national championship, that’s what you can do there,” Pate prefaced before saying, “And you can consistently be a player there. Contrary to what people believe about Ole Miss, that is still a build multiple years to a peak kind of program. A window program as I call them. They’re not sustained year in and year out. They’re just not that kind of program. Florida can be.”
Lane Kiffin has paid his dues at Ole Miss, can leave for Florida guilt-free
If Ole Miss can’t get over any significant hurdles during the 2024/25 College Football Playoff, Kiffin will have maxed out what he can do with the Rebels. Jaxson Dart will be leaving after this season, and though Ole Miss has Austin Simmons and LSU transfer Walker Howard behind him, there won’t be another multi-year star under center in Oxford like Dart in a long time.
In the SEC, you need that level of QB play to be a top contender. Georgia’s Carson Beck, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, and Texas’s Quinn Ewers are all potential first-round NFL draft picks. If Tennessee crashes that party, it’ll be because of Nico Iamaleava.
It’s been a good run for Kiffin at Ole Miss, and it’s possible the Rebels can pay for a top arm in the transfer portal again as they did with Dart. But the trenches will always be challenged against the best of the best and they’ll never be overwhelmingly great in that department because the country’s best linemen don’t go to, or stay in, Mississippi.
They go to Florida, though. Kiffin has shed his job-hopper label with this current Rebels tenure – and he’d be forgiven for going to greener pastures.
