Who: Pete Golding, Ole Miss
Title: Defensive coordinator/inside linebackers coach
Previous stop: Alabama defensive coordinator/inside linebackers coach (2018-22)
Why he's important: It's Bluto and Otter of Animal House leaving the Omega Theta Pi house and trying to run their own business. It's Succession's Kendall and Roman really going through with their co-CEO plan atop the Waystar Royco org chart.
Choose your pop culture example, but the young (Golding is 39, Lane Kiffin looks and acts much younger than his 48 years) visor-clad former Nick Saban coordinators uniting to bring down the Old Boss has the potential for high comedy... and some really good football.
In five seasons running Alabama's defense, Golding never allowed more than 20.1 points per game, nor more than 5.04 yards per play -- including a 4.59 mark (fourth nationally) in 2022. Across those same five seasons, Ole Miss never allowed less than 5.32 yards a play and 24.7 points per game.
The 2022 Rebels defense surrendered a modest 25.5 points a game, but with an asterisk: 13 total points allowed in their first three games, and 245 in their last seven.
One might view the circumstances walks into at Ole Miss as a nightmare. In reality, it's a dream.
Alabama won "only" one national championship in Golding's five seasons and missed the Playoff twice -- so, naturally, it was all his fault, in the eyes of many fans. Coordinating Nick Saban's defense at Bama came with a lot of money, but it was the definition of a thankless job.
In Oxford, Golding walks into a job where if Ole Miss can simply play solid-to-good defense for all 12 games, the Rebels will contend for an SEC West title and a New Year's Six bowl, and Golding will be much happier at work and at home.
"I think you get so locked into a career and you get focused on the next step. When you're married and you got three kids, sometimes you lose the value of what you're really about. Having won national championships and a lot of SEC championships and all of that, I still wanted to go somewhere my family could be more involved," he told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger this month.
"When you can go somewhere that's already had success, that I think is very close to being elite year-in and year-out, and feel like you can have an impact and you can help that, especially one your side of the ball, while still being somewhere that your wife wants to be, and still do what you love to do, I think that's special."
PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS: No. 15: Bryan Nardo, Oklahoma State; No. 14: Chad Bumphis, Mississippi State; No. 13: Buster Faulkner, Georgia Tech; No. 12 Chris Jackson, Texas; No. 11: Philip Montgomery, Auburn; No. 10: Josh Gattis: Maryland; No. 9: Lance Guidry, Miami; No. 8: Austin Armstrong, Florida; No. 7: Sean Lewis, Colorado; No. 6: Phil Longo, Wisconsin; No. 5: Tony White, Nebraska
"That was like the No. 1 coach's portal guy," Kiffin said last month. "That was really neat to have a chance to get Pete. He's got a background in the SEC, in the area of recruiting also besides just being a brilliant mind in the game. And so it's been awesome to work with him already. Knew a lot of people that had worked with him and had talked so well about him, so to bring him in is really big."
Lane Kiffin's offenses have led the SEC in rushing all three seasons he's been in Oxford. There's no reason to expect that to change in 2023 with Quinshon Judkins returning after a 1,565-yard, 16-touchdown freshman season.
What if Ole Miss can field a top 40 defense this fall? Top 30? We'd likely be talking about a team ranked No. 22 in the initial AP poll that could challenge for 10 wins and a New Year's Six bowl.
The Rebels could start as many as seven transfers on defense, most of whom were multi-year starters elsewhere.
"Having coached Division II, I-AA and mid-major, (it's) very similar to high school, every year you don't know what you have. Instead of trying to fit players to a system, you're trying to think, 'Who do we have and what can they do?' And then let's put them in those situations that they can excel in."
One of those newcomers is Suntarine Perkins, a true freshman whom Golding had rated as the No. 1 linebacker in the country while recruiting at Alabama. "He's done really well. He loves football, very engaged, takes good notes, so I think he has an extremely high ceiling."
"I didn't look at what they can't do. They're our guys. What position can we put those guys that are already on the roster in to where they can have success in the SEC West? There was some talent up front. We needed to add some depth to that, which we did. The back end was a little depleted from a numbers standpoint," Golding said.
Ole Miss addressed those depleted numbers by adding Zamari Walton, a 4-year starter at Georgia Tech, DeShawn Gaddie, Jr., a multi-year starter at North Texas, Monty Montgomery, a multi-year starter at Louisville, and starters from Florida Atlantic and Liberty as well.
To hear Golding tell it, that experience will be necessary to run a system with enough complexity and agility required to slow down SEC offenses.
"Our motto on defense is smart, fast and physical. And it's in that order. You've got to get guys that can run and guys that can process. The difference between the college game and the NFL is there's not unbalanced (formations) in the NFL, there's not formations into the boundary in the NFL, very few teams are going tempo in the NFL. You combine all those things, that could be in one play. Guys coming from high school, they're not used to seeing it at the speed it is," he said earlier this month.
"It's very easy to say, 'Let's keep it simple.' Then every time you line up in this, they know exactly what you're in. They've got coaches too and they've got good players too. It's not always about having the chalk last. It's about making the same things look different and different things look the same."
The season opens Saturday against Mercer before a trip to defending AAC and Cotton Bowl champion Tulane. Ole Miss faces Georgia Tech in Week 3 before going back on the road for what will certainly be the emotional turning point of The Visor Brothers series, when Kiffin and Golding return to Bryant-Denny Stadium to face Alabama.