ESPN Analyst Claims Lane Kiffin Has Made Ole Miss 'America's Team'

How Lane Kiffin is like Jerry Jones.

Ole Miss gets another playoff test Thursday night against Miami. / Lauren Witte/Clarion Ledger / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Ole Miss looks to continue its remarkable run closer to a national championship on Thursday night with a date against Miami looming in the semifinals. Pete Golding will once again lead a coaching staff very much in transition into battle against a top team and hope that the Trinidad Chambliss-led offense can do something special.

One can guarantee that the game is going to be entertaining. And that there will be a tremendous amount of intriguing storylines on which to hang. Because don't look now but Ole Miss has quietly become America's Team.

At least per Dan Orlovsky, who shared a take on Get Up in advance of the semifinal.

"Proving people wrong is a powerful drug," Orlovsky said. "And that's the Ole Miss players right now. Lane Kiffin has become a little bit like Jerry Jones. He's made Ole Miss America's Team. Everybody wants to see Ole Miss win and now these players that were brought in to the program because of or in part due to Lane Kiffin are like 'we're going to do it without out you.'"

"Lane Kiffin has become a little bit like Jerry Jones. He's made Ole Miss America's team." 👀

—@danorlovsky7 pic.twitter.com/iXwJVHvRIQ

— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) January 8, 2026

Look, there's definitely something to be said about athletes fueling themselves on disbelief. Surely a good amount of Rebels players want to win a title to prove to Kiffin that he could have won one too had he stayed. They also—and stay with me here—probably want to win a national title to win a national title, completely independent of Kiffin's existence.

It's a bit funny that for how fast college sports have changed over the past few years we seem to be focusing a lot of attention on a coach who left for a job that pays more money. It's nice that people aren't totally desensitized by that, yet it's odd that he's being cast as this villain. A fair-minded person would concede that one of the major reasons Ole Miss is in this position is because of the work Kiffin put into building the team. He seems to be trying to find a way forward through strange situation and is a no-win predicament.

If the net-net of all this is him galvanizing the team and making them America's new sweethearts then that seems like a cross he'd willingly bear.

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