Lane Kiffin reminds us bad programs can become good ones

Mississippi State and Ole Miss once shared the status of bottom tier SEC teams, but the Rebels have moved up. The Bulldogs haven't...yet.

Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin speaks to the media during SEC Media Day at Omni Atlanta Hotel. | Jordan Godfree-Imagn Images

It’s much easier right now to be a Mississippi State baseball fan than it is to be a football one.

Mississippi State’s baseball team has national championship aspirations. Mississippi State’s football team is just hoping to win more than two games.

Unfortunately, the college baseball seasons doesn’t start for another seven months, so it’ll be the football team we pay more attention to.

The Bulldogs will get their turn in the spotlight that is SEC Media Days on Wednesday morning, along with Alabama. You never know what will be said and you never really know what memories a comment will unlock.

That brings us to Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin who spoke on the first day of media days. Early on he talked about some of the accomplishments his program has made.

“I believe in the last 55 years of Ole Miss there has been four top 12 finishes,” Kiffin said. “So, three of those to be in the last four years, one in the previous 51 years, says a lot about what we've been able to do through the staff, through the players, through everybody involved, especially the leadership above me. Over that time, the third most SEC wins of all 16 SEC teams.”

The memory that unlocked for me was back in 2007 when I moved from Texas to Mississippi. I knew very little about Ole Miss and even less about Mississippi State. And if you remember that time period, neither team was good. They were bad. So bad, both coaches got fired.

Since then, though, both Ole Miss and Mississippi State have had periods of great success. The Rebels are in one right now and the Bulldogs aren’t.

But that can change. Ole Miss is showing it can be done, probably to the displeasure of many of you reading this who are also wondering why a Mississippi State site writer is talking about Ole Miss in such a positive way.

Because at one point, to me, the two schools were both in the bottom tier of SEC teams. (To be fair, this was before Alabama had really moved up to the top tier.) Now, one is not and that shows the other one can do it too.

SEC Media Days continue today with Auburn and Georgia in the morning and Tennessee and Texas in the afternoon. So, get ready Arch-mania in Atlanta.