TAMPA, Fla. — Pete Golding won SEC media days on Wednesday.
Other than a stray curse word referring to barnyard manure (since Nick Saban dropped a bomb on “College GameDay” I think football coaches believe they have carte blanche to follow suit), the Hammond native and still new Ole Miss coach trumped all the others here so far in the affable and engaging department.
He was even a little self-deprecating. When asked what was different about him from when he was the Ole Miss defensive coordinator, he said: “I’m thinner.”
Unless Lane Kiffin — speaking of thinner, Georgia’s Kirby Smart called the Hot Yoga King the Adonis of coaches — decides to punch back with some instantly viral remark when he takes the podium here Thursday, it won’t be a contest. That would be out of character for the still new LSU coach. Kiffin has a reputation for being fairly subdued at these things.
Talking season is one thing. The real season is 180 degrees different. And everyone knows when and where the most important contest between these two men and their teams will be: Sept. 19 in Oxford.
Kiffin needs that win to validate his move to LSU, to what he has so often said is the better job.
Golding needs to win to validate himself as a coach, his 2-1 post-Kiffin record in this past season’s College Football Playoff not withstanding.
When asked about allegations of tampering by Clemson coach Dabo Swinney concerning former Clemson turned Ole Miss linebacker Luke Ferrelli, Golding didn’t issue a flat-out denial. As you could probably surmise, Ole Miss kept Ferrelli as far away from media days as possible without him needing a passport.
But Golding was honest in acknowledging he may have to live with the specter of Kiffin for a long, long time.
"If you get married, and there's an ex your wife knows about, she doesn't age,” Golding said. “She's never dead."
That’s the plight of being the man who follows the man, which Golding is. He’s a man of the people right now in Mississippi, but let him lose to Kiffin and see how that worm turns. It won’t be what Kalen DeBoer is enduring as Saban’s replacement at Alabama, but it’s a potentially prickly time.
As has been pounded into the well-manicured Vaught-Hemingway Stadium turf, the animosity between Ole Miss folks and Kiffin has raged like a Canadian wildfire this offseason. Golding, seemingly with some direct intent, tried to take the heat down a notch when asked about his relationship with Kiffin.
“Lane and I are good,” he said. “I did not know coach Kiffin prior to taking the Ole Miss job. I wasn't at Alabama when coach Kiffin was. So our relationship really grew in those 3½ years (at Ole Miss).
“He did a lot for me, and I was very, very appreciative of how he treated me and my family. I learned a lot from him. I have no ill will towards coach Kiffin. He texts me on a regular basis and there are certain things we'll talk about and certain things we don't talk about. He's very competitive, just like I'm very competitive.
“I can separate the two. Some people can't.”
I think he was talking to you, Johnny Reb.
Golding then went further, relating a question he recently put to a group of Ole Miss boosters. It went like this:
“In 2021 if you said you could look into 2025 and you're about to be 11-1 and go to the (College Football) playoff, would you take it if your coach was leaving?” Golding asked the group. “Hell yeah, you would.”
It’s a similar question that could have been put to LSU fans in 1999: Nick Saban is coming. He’s only staying five years, but he’s going to win a national championship and set you up for another three years after that. But he’s then going to come back to Alabama and own you and the rest of the SEC for the next decade and a half. Deal?
Done deal, for sure.
Now for the big question about Golding and the Rebels: What will they do for an encore to Ole Miss’ most successful season since the days of Johnny Vaught in the early 1960s?
The argument can be made that the Rebels return the nation’s best backfield duo in quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy, who both are being pushed by Ole Miss as Heisman Trophy candidates. But will the Rebels be as explosive without Kiffin and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. running the show? Ole Miss had four of its five most productive offensive seasons ever under Kiffin. That won’t be easy to replicate in the slightest.
Neither will Golding’s win at SEC media days when what really matters comes around Sept. 19.