No. 13 Ole Miss hosts Tulane on Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), which marks the 77th meeting between Lane Kiffin and Jon Sumrall's respective, current employers and the second meeting between the two gentlemen. Kiffin hosted Sumrall in his maiden voyage as a head coach, a 28-10 win over Sumrall's Troy team in 2022.
Sumrall hasn't done a whole lot of losing since then, which inspired Kiffin to make this prediction on the SEC coaches teleconference on Wednesday.
“I told my staff yesterday, I said, ‘I feel like I’m going to be in head coach’s meetings in the conference’ — I think our first one is in January — ‘with Coach Sumrall,'" Kiffin said.
No disrespect to Kiffin, but... duh.
A Huntsville, Ala., native, Sumrall played linebacker at Kentucky from 2002-04, then immediately went into coaching as a GA at his alma mater. After a decade way, he returned to the conference as linebackers coach at Ole Miss and Kentucky before landing the Troy head coaching job in 2022. Now in his fourth season as a head coach, Sumrall is 35-9 with two conference championships and one division title, feats accomplished at schools sitting firmly within the SEC footprint. At 43 years old, Sumrall has been preparing his entire life for an SEC job. He's not currently in the conference, but he's extremely of the conference.
With all that established, the question is: where?
The most fun theory is that the job Sumrall takes is... Kiffin's, after he replaces Billy Napier at Florida. Sumrall spent the 2018 season in Oxford, the second of Matt Luke's three years atop the program. Sumrall has been widely linked to Kentucky in the event the program and Mark Stoops part ways if the Wildcats have a second straight disappointing season.
But the fact that we're having this conversation is beside the point. Tulane plays Ole Miss this week, and Sumrall would surely like all the focus to be on that and that alone.
In fact, nothing Kiffin does is an accident, and college football's Troll in Chief just so happened to sprinkle some rat poison in the locker room of a 3-0 team fresh off a win over Duke and can absolutely beat the Rebels on Saturday.
“His teams are really disciplined,” Kiffin said. “They play really hard, they tackle really well. He’s got a really good fundamental defensive system. And he wins.”