Can Pete Golding get Ole Miss out from Lane Kiffin's shadow? - ESPN

OXFORD, Miss. — Pete Golding was hours away from landing his first head coaching job, and he was still trying to talk his way out of it.

Inside Ole Miss' football facility, Golding huddled with Lane Kiffin deep into the night — Golding felt certain he could convince his boss to stay. They had something special, Golding said, like those Clemson teams of the 2010s — a dynamic coach and two coordinators happy in their roles. They had caught lightning in a bottle, and now Kiffin, enamored with the LSU job, wanted to blow it all up.

Be careful what you wish for, Golding told him.

«I was telling him, 'You're a f---ing idiot if you leave,'» Golding said. «I thought I could convince him to stay. And then it got real.»

Golding had worked his way up from Division II to be the defensive coordinator at Alabama. He left the Tide following the 2022 season, jumping ship to start a life in Oxford with an Ole Miss team that had just lost five of its past six games. Nick Saban was livid, and Golding said he didn't speak to him again for a year and a half. But what Golding saw in Ole Miss wasn't about football. It was family. He had kids, and he didn't want to move them from place to place as he chased the next big job. In Oxford, he saw a forever home.

Now, here was Kiffin, on the brink of foreclosing on the dream.

While Kiffin hemmed and hawed over his decision, athletic director Keith Carter had been running a coaching search in tandem, ready to move quickly should Kiffin leave. Carter had interviewed a handful of solid candidates — «guys who got big-time jobs this cycle,» he said — but it seemed impossible anyone could arrive from the outside and keep order amid a likely chaotic Kiffin exit.

Golding wasn't lobbying for the job