Lane Kiffin jabs Paul Finebaum over annually saying he'll leave Ole Miss: 'Can we not do that again this year?"

Lane Kiffin has had his name come up the last few coaching carousels despite staying at Ole Miss. For that, he blames Paul Finebaum as well.

Kiffin sat down with Finebaum on his show on Monday afternoon while at SEC Media Days in Atlanta. He, during their interaction, went on to ask him to stop starting those rumors by the end of every seasons that he’s going to leave Oxford.

“What’s really good, though, is when, about week ten, and you always say, like, ‘Well, I think he’s taking this job’ and then like the players and all the fans are mad, so,” said Kiffin. “Can we not do that again this year?”

Kiffin has been a rumored candidate in each of the past two offseasons with the open, or believed to soon be open, jobs elsewhere in the SEC at Auburn and Florida. Finebaum defended himself in those instances by saying he was just listening to those respective fanbases while pairing it with his thought that he wasn’t ever going to stay long-term at Ole Miss. However, Kiffin was glad to refute that opinion by Finebaum.

“I don’t go out there and just manufacture jobs for Lane Kiffin. The fans there wanted you…But I never believed you would stay at Ole Miss,” Finebaum said

“Proved you wrong,” jabbed Kiffin.

Kiffin is entering his sixth season as head coach of the Rebels where he has the best record of his four stops at 44-18 (.710). That includes three seasons of ten-plus wins in 2021, 2023, and 2024 with them being in contention for a berth in the College Football Playoff in all of those.

Despite that, Kiffin being on the hot seat actually came up this morning at one point at SEC Media Days. Still, in his response to that, he again simply blamed that on Finebaum.

“The only way I’ll be on the hot seat in the next month will be you if you decide to do one of your things where you’re like, because everybody listens to you as the voice of college football and the SEC, and you’re like, ‘I don’t know, man. This Lane Kiffin can’t ever win a big game, can’t get it done. You know, like, there needs to be a change in Oxford if he doesn’t get to the final four this year’…And then they believe it too. And then people are like, ‘Well, Paul Finebaum said that you should, you know, Ole Miss should be in the semifinals?'” Kiffin said.

Based on his resumé, one might’ve thought Kiffin wouldn’t have spent this long in Mississippi. That said, he sounds to be right at home at this point with the program with, as he says, little need for rumors of his future there going into and past 2025 with his contract currently having him there through 2030.