The 2025 College Football Playoff is just around the corner, but rather than potential winners and losers, all anyone can seem to focus on is the debacle that is Lane Kiffin’s departure from Ole Miss. The 50-year-old play caller has officially left the Rebels hanging right before the postseason in favor of the cash and the bright lights of Baton Rouge.
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Simply put, it’s been a disaster for the Rebels, and according to the Las Vegas Raiders’ premier pass rusher, Maxx Crosby, the governing body of the NCAA needs to ensure that something similar could never happen again. “It’s obviously unfortunate,” Crosby stated during the latest episode of his self-titled podcast.
“Unfortunately, how the rules are set up and how everything is now in the NCAA, which is something they have to address and fix, is how the hiring and the transfer portal, the timing is all bunched together,” Crosby outlined before comparing the CFB rules with the NFL. “The reason why the NFL is simple is that free agency is at this time. The draft is at this time. In college football, it’s all jumbled at the end of the year, so it doesn’t give him an option. It makes him the bad guy no matter what,” he added.
Kiffin had initially requested to stay on board and finish coaching the Rebels through the playoffs, but the program’s athletic director, Keith Carter, put a stop to that. The newfound head coach of the Tigers then allegedly attempted to poach members of the Ole Miss coaching staff, but to no avail.
Nevertheless, Crosby suggests that the original sin of accepting LSU’s offer is something that “you can’t get mad at Lane Kiffin for.” Asserting that “the better job” resides in Louisiana, Crosby argues that Kiffin has “earned the right” to do so after having “turned Ole Miss completely around.”
It’s worth noting that Kiffin himself has stated that his decision to leave Oxford, Mississippi, was predicated more on family rather than football. Regardless of what his true motivations and intentions may have been, however, the result is still the same for the Rebels.
A top-10 team in the nation is officially without its head coach and is now at risk of losing even more talent through the transfer portal, and again, this all just before the postseason. Should the NCAA hope to keep some of the competitive integrity of college football intact, it will likely begin to implement some guidelines and potential restrictions.
At this time, however, none of those ideas have been publicly discussed by anyone of significance. Suffice to say, we won’t be getting any of the sweeping or immediate changes that Crosby and others are calling for, but perhaps if everyone is loud enough, then we may be able to create a bit of change somewhere further down the line.
