The Ole Miss Rebels' rise in the post-Lane Kiffin era during the 2025/2026 College Football Playoff has been inspiring. Not to CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli, though, apparently.
Fornelli ranked all four potential CFP title game matchups, and his bottom-two matchups both included Ole Miss. Fornelli ranked the four, asking, "How competitive would the game likely be? How does the matchup look?" and "Who has the coolest uniforms?" Fornelli also "considered which matchup would be most appealing to a broader audience."
It wasn't all bad, though. Fornelli did imply that the entertainment value of the Rebs and Oregon Ducks would be the highest. The top-ranked matchup was Oregon and the Miami Hurricanes, followed by the Indiana Hoosiers and The U. The bottom-ranked game was IU and Mississippi.
"Of the four possible matchups, this is the one most likely to deliver us a shootout. Ole Miss has been involved in plenty of those all year, thanks to the likes of Trinidad Chambliss and an explosive offense. Lane Kiffin might be gone (oh, the irony of leaving for LSU to compete for national championships while then watching the team you just left do that), but he didn't take the offense with him. Ole Miss has scored 80 points through its first two playoff games after averaging 37.6 during the regular season," Fornelli wrote.
So if the entertainment value is higher for an Ole Miss matchup than any other, and the Kiffin drama is juicier than the feel-good stories of Curt Cignetti, Dan Lanning, and Mario Cristobal, why are Pete Golding's Rebels a program no one wants to advance past the Canes?
Ole Miss is a toxic SEC brand to the national media
While ESPN loves the South, because it owns the SEC and ACC's media rights, most of the New York-based news corporations don't. A team called the "Rebels," in a state like Mississippi, whose flag was controversial up until Mike Leach had it changed in 2021, is never going to be a national darling.
Even if narratively, they're becoming one because of how much a villain Kiffin has transformed into by taking the money and prestige the LSU Tigers had to offer to leave a team in the middle of a CFP run.