Auburn football picked up its best win of the season on Saturday night in knocking off Ole Miss 31-20 under the lights at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
The Tigers now head into yet another battle of ranked SEC West teams against the #13 Texas A&M Aggies in College Station this coming Saturday afternoon.
Ole Miss? Well, they head into uncertain and uncharted territory.
Lane Kiffin was outdueled by Bryan Harsin Saturday night, failing to convert on three of his four 4th down attempts. The Tigers topped the Rebels in total yards and won the time of possession battle en route to a win that was sealed early in the fourth quarter with an Anders Carlson field goal to give AU a double-digit lead.
Now what for the perennial flight-risk that Kiffin tends to be early on in his tenures at schools since being let go by Nick Saban as the OC at Alabama?
Auburn football pushed Lane Kiffin closer to LSU
Kiffin has been rumored to be one of the top options to replace ‘Coach O’ at LSU. Over the past week, several notable college football talking heads have come out to support that theory.
Bo Bounds thinks that if offered the Tigers HC job on the Bayou, Kiffin would jump at the opportunity:
"“I think if Lane’s offered the LSU job — and I have no idea if he will be — then I would think he would have to take it,” Bounds said during an appearance on “The Matt McClearin Show” on WJOX 94.5 FM on Wednesday. “I mean, they’re losing Matt Corral, 17 starters. At Bama and Clemson and Ohio State, Georgia, I guess, a few other programs, you can usually reload pretty quick and so on and so on, right? I mean, even Bama’s not dominant this year. So 17 starters, losing Corral — all he talks about is how special Corral is."
Kiffin’s post-game comments following last night’s loss definitely support that idea.
Keith Smithmier, a regular contributor on the Paul Finebaum show, took a different angle. Smithmier thinks that the desire to surpass Saban is his ultimate muse:
"“Whether he goes to LSU, or USC, or anywhere, I can’t imagine that Lane is going to spend the rest of his career, or even 10 years at Ole Miss building a program. I think somewhere in him, is this desire to ultimately overcome Saban. I think the one job that if he were to ever plant and stay for a long time would be if he could get Alabama. My fun kind of hypothetical scenario is Lane gets the LSU job, wins the national championship, and then Saban retires. Lane jilts LSU and goes to Alabama because he ultimately wants to be the guy that sits in Nick Saban’s chair.”"
With the 31-20 loss to Auburn football marking the second defeat of the season, hopes of an SEC Championship berth have severely faded in Oxford.
And once Corral is gone–potentially after this season with the NFL calling–the idea of competing in the SEC West could be a distant memory in 2022 and beyond.
LSU has a superior recruiting foundation and brand to Ole Miss. With the Rebels looking unlikely to play in anything as significant as whatever bowl game they end up in this season for the foreseeable future, yet another Lane Kiffin coaching jump could be in store.
The loss to Auburn football may well end up being the beginning of the end of Kiffin’s time roaming the Rebel sidelines.