Kirk Herbstreit, Joey Galloway claim Lane Kiffin should stay at Ole Miss

Lane Kiffin has a massive choice in front of him: Stay at Ole Miss or accept a job elsewhere. On the Nonstop podcast, ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit and Joey Galloway weighed in on Kiffin’s dilemma.

“He loves this team, and he wants to win this championship right now. But, with the system and the timing of everything, the way it currently is, he’s got to make a decision,” Herbstreit said. “Ole Miss told him, ‘Saturday, that’s it. We need to know what’s up the day after the Egg Bowl.’

“[If he’s leaving], does the school let him stay and coach into their magical season the way Scott Frost did at UCF when they won all their games. They allowed him to stay before he left to go to Nebraska. Or, do you think, ‘Get out of here. If you don’t want to be here, we don’t want you here. Get out of here.’ … Just such a messy thing for Lane or any coach to be put in. The timing of this is awful.”

Ole Miss is 10-1 and one win away from securing its first-ever appearance in the College Football Playoff. Alas, as Herbstreit mentioned, it’s unclear if Ole Miss will allow Kiffin to coach in the CFP if he tells the administration Saturday he plans on coaching elsewhere next season.

Florida and LSU are each interested in hiring Kiffin as their next head coach. Nonetheless, if Kiffin leaves, it likely won’t be due to finances.

On Friday, On3’s Pete Nakos, Brett McMurphy and Chris Low reported that Ole Miss, Florida and LSU are each expected to offer salary packages to Kiffin worth at least $13 million per year, and up to $14 million per year. Assuming Kiffin accepts an outside offer, Galloway believes Ole Miss’ players should decide if Lane Kiffin coaches the team in the postseason.

“I would love to see the coaches, the [administration], whoever it is, get the players together and let them vote whether they want him to stay and coach them through the playoff—knowing that he’s leaving—or would they rather have an assistant coach, somebody else that’s on staff right now,” Galloway said. “It should be a player decision on whether he stays or not.

“Listen, adults are going to have their feelings. And, if he was leaving, and I was in the administration, I would have feelings about it too. I would be bothered. I’d be like, ‘Get out of here.’ But the players are the ones that are with him every day. They came there to play for him. I think they should decide on whether he stays [for the CFP] if he makes a decision to go somewhere else.”