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Ole Miss Players Suggest Lane Kiffin Lied About Former Team in Farewell Statement

The Rebels are attempting to change coaches on the fly.
Lane Kiffin's exit from Ole Miss made the successful-but-polarizing coach yet another glut of enemies.
Lane Kiffin's exit from Ole Miss made the successful-but-polarizing coach yet another glut of enemies. | Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images

When coach Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU on Sunday, he kicked up all the vitriol fans of the spurned Rebels had to offer. The web of entanglements between Kiffin and ESPN’s pundits, too, earned him an avalanche of criticism in the press.

However, new evidence suggests those ill feelings extend to his players as well.

That evidence came in the form of social media posts from a pair of Ole Miss players Tuesday evening, both of whom disputed Kiffin’s assertion in his farewell statement that the Rebels players asked him to coach them in the College Football Playoff and athletic director Keith Carter blocked it.

“‘Despite the team asking me to keep coaching,’” offensive lineman Brycen Sanders wrote, quoting Kiffin’s words. “I think everyone that was in that room would disagree.”

Linebacker Suntarine Perkins was even more forthright.

“That was not the message you said in the meeting room,” Perkins wrote. “Everybody that was in there can vouch on this.”

Kiffin has burned a number of bridges in his well-traveled career dating back to his days with the Raiders, but he will have to answer for his departure from Ole Miss relatively quickly—LSU plays the Rebels in Oxford, Miss., in 2026.


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Patrick Andres
PATRICK ANDRES

Patrick Andres is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He joined SI in December 2022, having worked for The Blade, Athlon Sports, Fear the Sword and Diamond Digest. Andres has covered everything from zero-attendance Big Ten basketball to a seven-overtime college football game. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a double major in history .