ESPN's Chris Low has a big feature out Thursday about the new-and-improved Lane Kiffin heading into the coach's fifth, and most anticipated, season in Oxford.
But, hidden within Lane's new life in Oxford -- beginning with a pre-dawn yoga session -- is an admission of how close Kiffin came to leaving Ole Miss for Auburn following Bryan Harsin in the fall of 2022.
As Low writes:
Kiffin's oldest daughter, Landry, is a sophomore at Ole Miss. She moved to Oxford from Los Angeles prior to her senior year of high school to be with her father. In fact, had it not been for Landry, her dad might be coaching at Auburn right now. Kiffin was leaning toward taking the Auburn job toward the end of the 2022 season when Landry came to him with a heartfelt message.
"You left me one time for another job when you went to Alabama, and now I'm here with you and you're going to do it again?" she asked her father.
Landry and her friends created a slideshow, complete with music, showing all of them together with Kiffin at Ole Miss.
In an alternate reality where Landry Kiffin never moves to Oxford, Lane takes the Auburn job and Ole Miss hires... who?
The candidates for the Auburn job were Kiffin, Hugh Freeze, and Deion Sanders.
As touching (and entertaining) a story it would've been to see Freeze back in Oxford, it's difficult to imagine Ole Miss re-hiring a coach it fired -- amid a flurry of NCAA sanctions, no less -- just six years prior. (Then again, who envisioned Bobby Petrino ever returning to Arkansas back in the spring of 2012?)
The other name on the list is fun to imagine. Remember, this was before Deion tarnished his star at Colorado. At the time, Sanders had Jackson State in the FCS top-10, cruising toward their second straight SWAC championship, while playing before crowds of 40,000-plus at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium. Everything Deion promised would happen at Jackson State came true.
While God only knows if Ole Miss eventually hires Deion in a world where Lane takes the Auburn job, the calls to bring the Coach Prime magic from Jackson up to Mississippi's flagship institution would have been deafening.
What we can foresee, though, is the psychological scar losing Kiffin to Auburn would've left on Ole Miss's collective ego. A quarter-century prior, Ole Miss watched Senator Tommy "Pine Box" Tuberville leave Oxford for Auburn; after going 25-20 in four seasons with the Rebels, Tuberville went 85-40 with an SEC championship and an undefeated season in a decade with the Tigers.
Kiffin's departure would've further signaled to the SEC and the coaching community as a whole that Ole Miss was forever below Auburn on the It Just Means More pecking order. Not to mention Alabama, Georgia, LSU and the rest.
But, it didn't happen, and today Ole Miss is ranked sixth in the country heading into its opener with Furman, while Auburn is looking to bounce back from a 6-7 season that ended with losses to New Mexico State, Alabama and Maryland.
And Ole Miss reportedly has Landry Kiffin to thank for it.