As fireworks popped above Vaught-Hemingway stadium on a steamy Saturday night, less than one minute after the final second melted off the clock to cement a program-validating victory for Ole Miss over Lane Kiffin and LSU, Pete Golding did an on-field interview with ESPN’s Laura Rutledge.

Golding talked about being proud of his team for fighting its collective ass off. He called Trinidad Chambliss a fierce competitor. He lauded the team’s focus in an emotional week supercharged by the ego-fueled circus that follows Kiffin everywhere he exists. Not once did he mention himself. The final question of this on-field exchange teed him up to do just that. Rutledge asked Golding how satisfying the win was for him personally, as well as the Ole Miss fanbase. Once again, Golding never mentioned himself.

“I think (Ole Miss Chancellor) Glenn Boyce and (Athletics Director) Keith Carter might have a beer tonight. I do know that,” Golding said.

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The unsolicited mention of Golding’s two bosses was no accident. He continued to espouse his appreciation for them in his postgame press conference. Golding is the antithesis of his predecessor, whose narcissistic personality disorder and social ineptitude deluded him into believing that he alone was responsible for Ole Miss’ success in this new era of college football. Kiffin’s constant fixation on what he doesn’t have and his perpetual desire to be somewhere else is only one small aspect of what makes him such a miserable and exhausting human to coexist with. But it’s perhaps the lone driving force behind his decision to quit on a team bound for the College Football Playoff to take another job opportunity. That, coupled with being a dictionary-worthy definition of a narcissist, prevented him from ever offering any semblance of appreciation of a place that revived his coaching career.

In contrast, Golding offered a refreshingly genuine appreciation of the place at which he currently exists, and the dozens of people who are responsible for the rise of the Ole Miss football program. Golding talked about the consistently high expectations of the football program since he arrived at Ole Miss prior to the 2023 season.

“It’s been in place ever since I got here and it’s not because of me. I remember when I got here, they had just lost five games (in 2022). I remember thinking ‘man, if we can average ten wins a year, they will build statues of us,’” Golding recalled. “After year two (2024), it’s like ‘man, if we don’t go to the natty, it’s a bust. It feels like Tuscaloosa again,’ and that’s the way it should be. Because that is what they have invested into this place, and when you have elite leadership at the top that is vertically-aligned, that’s what it should be. That is the expectation here now and we aren’t going to run from that. To do that, you have to have great coaches, you have to have great players and you have to have the funds to do it. We have the best leadership in the country and we have everything we need.”

He’s not wrong. And it’s what Lane Kiffin never understood and never seemingly wanted to try to understand. Kiffin is one hell of a football coach. He made the Ole Miss football program relevant again. He made Ole Miss football games fun to attend. He held the administration’s feet to the proverbial fire to become vertically-aligned. He was probably the single biggest driving force behind the ascent of this program. But that doesn’t mean he was the only driving force or the only reason for the ascension.

For whatever reason, college football media and fans are incredibly slow to shift their way of thinking. This sport, and really college athletics as a whole, changed drastically on July 1, 2021, when Name, Image and Likeness became permissible, and then unlimited transfers being allowed a couple of years later. In this new ecosystem that is slowly being (loosely) regulated, having competent leadership at the top is the single most important ingredient to the recipe of thriving in this era. It’s arguably more important than money, because there have been plenty of expensive rosters and well-funded programs in the last half decade that have wilted due to dysfunctional leadership. Auburn is the perfect example of this. The Tigers are utterly irrelevant in this modern era. This is partially do to their dysfunctional booster culture and partially due to thinking that hiring former Mississippi State AD John Cohen — a man who set Mississippi State back at least a half decade due to his stance that NIL was an unsustainable fad — was a good idea.

Let Auburn teach you this lesson: competent leadership matters greatly.

Ole Miss has that in Boyce and Carter. They have that in Walker Jones, Denson Hollis, and so many other competent, rational people who have played an invaluable role in elevating this football program — and really every major sport on campus. Ole Miss’ success since 2021 doesn’t happen without Lane Kiffin, but it also doesn’t happen without all the other aforementioned people. The latter group has seemingly always understood that. Kiffin did not, which is why he left Ole Miss for what is perceived as a better job. I am not going to sit here and try to tell you the Ole Miss job is as good or better than the LSU job, because that’s not true. The LSU gig is one of the best in the sport, but how wide is that gap in this modern era?

How aligned is LSU?

It is currently paying over $60 million in buyouts to former coaches, in addition to the absurd amount of money it paid for a man who has never won anything of significance in his entire career. It’s also currently refusing to pay the contractual penalties for two of its players, former Ole Miss players Devin Harper and Princewell Umanmielen, a practice that is commonplace in virtually every other similar scenario.

A buffoon of a governor, Jeff Landry, seems to be running the school. Last year, he apparently looked at LSU Athletics, football in particular, and decided it was a chance to score political points, and began chastising former AD Scott Woodward for such irresponsible spending, and publicly called for his firing while declaring that LSU will absolutely not be wasting money on ridiculous college football head coach contracts.

Once he succeeded in getting Woodward fired, Landry was almost solely responsible for giving Kiffin a seven-year, $91 million deal — because he is a hypocritical conman who never believed anything he said about irresponsible spending. He inserted a yes man as a school president in Wade Rousse, and promoted Verge Ausberry from interim AD to permanent AD. It’s worth mentioning that Ausberry actively covered up domestic violence allegations relating to an LSU football player. How he is still employed by any athletics department, much less being an empty suit and errand boy for the Governor, while having the title of “running” LSU’s athletics department, is completely absurd.

And we were all gaslit into believing all of this was totally normal because “it’s LSU” (I still have yet to receive an adequate explanation for what that actually means other than being totally unfounded bravado and arrogance).

There is no adult to parent Lane Kiffin, and he reports to a governor who once got so mad that LSU stopped bringing Mike the Tiger (like, the live one) onto the field, that he imported another tiger from Florida (named Omar Bradley) to be on the field prior to the LSU-Alabama game in 2024. So, in essence, Lane Kiffin, who possesses the social intellect of a 12-year-old child, and a politician whose entire career has been built off of loud political stunts, are running the largest university in the state of Louisiana. Does that sound like a remotely stable or sustainable situation to you? Does it sound vertically aligned?

What’s that? You answered no? presumably because you are a remotely rational human being? Well, I’ve got news for you. You are dumb and wrong. It’s not a big deal because it’s LSU and LSU is #JustDifferent

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The point is this: erratic and incompetent leaders fail in the modern era of college football. I would describe Kiffin as the former and everyone else involved in this unserious operation as the latter. But for as good of a football coach as Kiffin is, he is an unstable personality, and with no adult to corral the 51-year-old man who spent a year begging everyone to believe he was a changed person, I have serious questions about the viability of whatever the hell this ongoing political experiment at LSU actually is.

Ole Miss, for all of its perceived shortcomings, has good, competent and rational people running the football program, the athletics department and the school. Kiffin’s inability to realize and appreciate that due to him being completely socially inept is what fueled this nine-month saga that I am incredibly glad is over.

After the game, Kiffin’s press conference was pretty somber. For a brief moment, he actually flirted with the concepts of gratitude and introspection.

“There were a lot of emotions driving in on the bus,” Kiffin said. “It was a lot of gratitude for things that went well beyond football. The first time coming into this type of game without my dad, it was a lot. It’s not what I thought it would be… it was a lot of gratitude for this place and the people who changed my life in ways that are way bigger than football.”

That sounds nice, but it’s incredibly ironic coming from a man who told Ole Miss it wasn’t good enough for him. That he couldn’t win a championship here. That it was a second-tier brand that he, because he is the greatest gift to ever encounter this earth, had reached a nonexistent ceiling at Ole Miss. It’s also incredible to me that a man who talks about gratitude to people he treated remarkably poorly for the entirety of his tenure here, and talked about being appreciative of a place he tried to burn down on the way out, could actually say that with a straight face. This is the same man that (allegedly) texted Walker Jones the day of the Sugar Bowl saying that Ole Miss was going to “get the shit beat out of them.”

Earlier this month, CBS Sports reporter John Talty released an incredibly well-written, and, at least as it pertains to Kiffin, unflattering book about Kiffin titled “Lane Being Lane.” You should buy it and read it. It’s well worth your time. One of the excerpts Talty published in the process of releasing the book was about Lane being unable to reconcile the concept of the Ole Miss football program continuing to exist after he left.

Have any of you ever left a job and felt gratitude for it allowing you to be successful, grateful for the people you met while there and your time spent there? I am sure many of you have. It’s a normal part of life. How many of you tried to burn it down on the way out?

Does any of this behavior sound like a man grateful for anything at all? Of course not. It’s complete nonsense from a pathological liar who is addicted to attention.

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Ole Miss masterfully handled what was largely unfair pressure

As I wrote about last week, Ole Miss faced an immense amount of pressure entering this football game. I thought a lot of it was unfair. Ole Miss had to win this football game for reasons that had very little to do with the direct consequences relating to the 2026 season. It had to win to validate that Lane Kiffin was a core ingredient to its success but not the entire recipe.

Fairly or unfairly, if Lane Kiffin came back to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium nine months after abandoning a playoff team he didn’t believe was good enough to compete for a championship and won, the perception of Ole Miss football would’ve drastically changed in the eyes of the general public.

Perception isn’t always reality, but when it comes to college football, it might as well be. And the perception of losing this game would’ve been that Kiffin was the only reason little ol’ Ole Miss ever dared to be relevant, and that now that he’s gone, Ole Miss will return to being whatever people perceived them to be prior to Kiffin — which sounds like a bottom feeder in the Southeastern Conference.

All of this pressure was created by Kiffin, and the embarrassing way the small and petty man behaved the last nine months since his departure, and the never-ending, oxygen-sucking saga that was the build up to this football game.

Despite all of that, Ole Miss thrived. It was the better football team on Saturday night. The Rebels dominated both lines of scrimmage. They had the better quarterback and they had the better game plan. And, most importantly, Ole Miss didn’t allow the emotions of this football game to adversely affect its play.

“We did a great job of keeping the main thing the main thing this week,” Golding said.

And the people who delivered this win all seemingly have an appreciation for the place in which they reside, the place that gave them an opportunity to play football at a high level, and they all seemingly share a belief that they are a big-time program.

“I just got here last year. Ole Miss welcomed me in, and has shown me nothing but love and support,” Trinidad Chamblis said. “I feel like the whole nation disrespects Ole Miss. When they compare LSU to Ole Miss, they always say LSU has more money, better facilities, a nicer stadium, a bigger fanbase. There was more to it than just Kiffin being on the other side of the ball. I am so happy we could get this win for our fans and for the people who support Ole Miss.”

After the game ended on Saturday night, two different postgame press conferences commenced simultaneously a couple hundred yards apart. One featured a man fielding questions about himself, and his emotions in a game in which he spent nine months ensuring that he would be the predominant storyline. The postgame press conference was about him, because any other alternative isn’t possible with Lane Kiffin. He has an unquenchable thirst for attention that will never be satisfied no matter where he works.

In the other press conference, another man profusely thanked everyone involved in the process of delivering the win, the leadership he answers to, and the fans that support him. It was a stark contrast that served as a fitting final chapter of a saga that was almost solely orchestrated by the man who mostly answered questions about himself.

Ole Miss’ victory on Saturday was a program-validating win. It was a win for rationality and sanity. Hopefully, any rational person will now see LSU for the wildly unserious operation that it is.

It was also a validation of the idea that treating people well is important, that having good people in leadership positions is important, and that no single person is solely responsible for the success of a major college football program in this modern era. That statement usually rings true in any industry or any aspect of life, unless of course you ask Lane Kiffin.

“I couldn’t be happier for Glenn and Keith. I am really grateful for the opportunity they provided me, something they didn’t have to do,” Golding said. “I think it’s a full circle moment for a lot of people, that no player, no person, is bigger than anyone else. This place has been built the right way with some really great people. The trajectory of this place is upward and that is where it is going to continue to go.”

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Ole Miss’ win over LSU validated its program…