College football is right around the corner and Ole Miss fans were given an early glimpse at the Rebels’ 2024-25 season at the annual SEC Media Days, this year being held in Dallas, Texas.
During his scheduled speaking appearance, Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin touched on multiple topics including the passing of his father, Monte Kiffin, his balanced approach to recruiting, constructing a roster in the current college football landscape, replacing All-American running back Quinshon Judkins, keeping his team away from outside distractions, and the additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC.
Father’s passing
Last Thursday, the football world was shaken up by the passing of legendary coach Monte Kiffin, Lane’s father. Monte, 84, died peacefully in Oxford where he was surrounded by family and friends. The legendary coach, best known for creating the “Tampa 2” defense while with the NFL’s Buccaneers, had a storied career where and became an accomplished figure in the sport.
Accomplishments aside, some of Monte’s later stops in his football career may have been the most rewarding, not as a coach but as a father. The defensive guru spent time at four different universities —Tennessee, USC, Florida Atlantic, and lastly, Ole Miss — watching his son endure the highs and lows of being a head coach and even breaking a record or two in the process.
Lane didn’t go into great detail about his father’s passing during his time at the podium but did acknowledge the love and affection he has been flooded with by fellow coaches, former players, and the Oxford community.
“In my opinion, it’s not really the place or the time to go into a lot on this. That will be on Saturday in Tampa,” Kiffin said as he went on to call his father a superhero.
Monte’s last game with Lane was a historic one as Ole Miss defeated Penn State 38-25 in the Peach Bowl to cement the Rebels’ first 11-win season in program history.
Recruiting approach
It’s no secret that Kiffin is widely known around the college football world as the “portal king” for his ability to pull some of the top talent among collegiate transfers. However, he added that it is equally important to bring in quality players from the high school ranks.
Referencing the NFL, as Kiffin does routinely, the Ole Miss head coach called players in the transfer portal “free agents,” while insinuating that high school prospects are the college version of draft picks. He said that in the ever-changing landscape of college football, it is paramount for the Rebels’ coaching staff to be able to thoroughly evaluate the best available talent at both levels and prioritize a system that has Ole Miss looking like a quality College Football Playoff contender.
“I think it’s critical to have a really good balance and I think, for us, the way we do it changes every year,” Kiffin said. “I don’t think the right way in the evolving college football landscape of recruiting, portal changes and windows, and now multiple transfers, you can’t be stuck and say, ‘We’re not going to take any or we’re only going to take this many percent of high school, this much of portal,’ or you’re going to get stuck.”
Kiffin really began to increase his recruiting efforts following Ole Miss’ 52-17 loss at Georgia last season in which the Rebels were outmanned on both sides of the ball. Since then, he beefed up both his offensive and defensive lines with players from the portal while also looking to Mississippi’s abundance of high school talent to add even more trench talent for future seasons.
Team building
Beyond his approach to balancing recruiting high school players and collegiate transfers, Kiffin says chief among his priorities is ensuring that the roster he fields come August 31 is cohesive. The head coach, once again bringing up the NFL, added that a collection of talent doesn’t automatically make a team successful.
With Ole Miss having arguably its most talented group of players during Kiffin’s tenure so far, the frontman is hopeful the team can come together as a collective unit capable of building upon the strengths of the roster.
“It’s not just your typical, normal, as always ‘Xs and Os’ in development, but they’ve got to come together. Look at professional sports. There are plenty of teams that were supposed to be good or added these great free agent teams and they come together — all these free agents — and then they don’t gel and they don’t play together,” Kiffin said. “It’s the ultimate team sport, so there’s a ton of work for us to do on the field and off the field for us to perform well.”
Ole Miss will present an offense with one of the more decorated veteran quarterbacks in the league, multiple NFL prospects at wide receiver, a deep stable of running backs, and a revamped offensive line with major power four additions. Defensively, a unit featuring two of the top transfer players from this past season, a veteran core of linebackers, and an experienced secondary will look to bring Ole Miss to heights unseen.
Filling the Judkins void
Amid Ole Miss’ successes in both high school recruiting and adding quality transfers came one gut punch to the roster. As the tongue-in-cheek reference goes, “The portal giveth and the portal taketh away,” and that was certainly the case for Ole Miss when All-American running back Quinshon Judkins jumped ship to play his junior season at Ohio State.
During his time in Oxford, Judkins’ name was routinely floated as one of the top running backs in the country. He accounted for 2,725 rushing yards and 31 touchdowns on the ground while adding 281 receiving yards and a trio of scores in the air as a Rebel.
“Quinshon’s a great player — one of the best players in all of college football,” Kiffin said. “We wish him the best. He’s very hard to replace. We have a number of guys that we’re excited about … We’re just always going to try to find the best way to win.”
To fill the Judkins void, Ole Miss will look to returning running back Ulysses Bentley IV as well as portal additions in Logan Diggs (LSU), Rashad Amos (Miami Ohio), and former Rebels’ back Henry Parrish who is returning to Oxford after a two-year stint with the Miami Hurricanes.
Kiffin, who has consistently fielded a nationally touted rushing attack throughout his tenure at Ole Miss, also said that his offenses constantly change to ensure that the best players have the ball in their hands to maximize production.
Rat poison mentality
Kiffin, heeding the advice of former mentor and legendary Alabama head coach Nick Saban, is tasked with aiding his staff and players in blocking out the noise — both good and bad — surrounding expectations for this coming season.
Ole Miss will undoubtedly be a top-10 team when preseason rankings start to come in. As fans and media members begin to spar over whether the ranking was high enough and if certain players are over or underrated, Kiffin plans to continue to stress to his players that outside chatter should have no bearing on the team’s performance.
“I don’t know that you completely contain it. You continue to talk about it,” Kiffin said. “Like in parenting, you just continue to hit on it and hope that it sticks.”
Though Kiffin is aware that he cannot control what his players read on social media, hear on the radio, or see on television, he is hopeful that building a culture of eradicating “rat poison” will yield positive results on the field.
New SEC layout
The SEC has officially extended its membership, bringing Texas and Oklahoma into the field of programs competing in a myriad of athletic competitions. The addition of the two schools is anticipated to bring immediate financial benefits to the conference, but one downside to their presence is the conference restructuring teams’ schedules and eliminating the east and west divisions of the conference — something Kiffin laments.
“In this area, you wouldn’t consider me a traditionalist, but in [regard to] the conferences and the divisions, I am. But it is what it is and there is some excitement in that the fans get to go to places they’re not used to and the players [as well],” Kiffin said.
On the football side of things, both programs bring a past and recent history of success to the table. Texas, who appeared in the 2023-24 College Football Playoff, and Oklahoma boast a collective total of 11 national championships and nine Heisman Trophy winners. Kiffin added that having these programs in the league will definitely pose challenges to his job as the Ole Miss head coach.
“It does make it more challenging if you bring in two national traditional powers of Heismans, stadium size, and tradition. Our job is more challenging,” Kiffin said. “It’s awesome in a lot of areas, but it’s harder to win when you add those two teams. But probably in the end, it will make us all better.”
The Rebels are not scheduled to face the Longhorns this season, but the team will take on the Sooners on Saturday, October 26 at an early time slot.
Lots of hype surrounds the Ole Miss program ahead of the 2024 campaign with fans even floating talks of the team being built for a national championship run. The Rebels will begin what is expected by some to be the program’s most storied campaign on August 31 at 6 p.m. when Furman trots into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
