Lane Kiffin to LSU: Josh Pate calls thought 'laughable' that he'd be allowed to coach Ole Miss in College Football Playoff

Lane Kiffin made his decision official on Sunday in leaving Ole Miss for LSU. Now, tonight, Josh Pate has fully reacted to everything about his departure from Oxford to his arrival as the new head coach in Baton Rouge.

Pate broke down Kiffin’s decision today to start off tonight on ‘Josh Pate’s College Football Show’. He began in the bayou as, considering all things with how their search started just over a month ago, he thought this was obviously best-case scenario for the Tigers.

“Let’s not beat around the bush. It’s one of the biggest days in the history of this program. This is a program that anyone this side of Brian Kelly this millennium has won a national championship as the head coach of. Lane Kiffin may very well be the next,” said Pate. “This could have gone really sideways. I think we all understand that, okay. If we just hit the rewind button about a month, Brian Kelly is out, and the governor is saying one thing, and then we’ve got an athletic director and is he going to be permanent or is he going to be the interim, and there’s a whole lot of other competition out there…Lane Kiffin, by a mile, is the number one candidate in the marketplace. Can LSU get its act together? Well, you know what, LSU got its act together. So, to that, I have to hat tip them, and they got the job done, and they landed their slam dunk, number one candidate.”

As for this saga as a whole, though, Pate understands that there was a lot of emotion caused by Kiffin with the Rebels, the Tigers, and, to a lesser extent, the Gators. Still, he felt no fanbase gets to call another one out in this case with how things went down, and how little any of them really know about what happened throughout this difficult decision-making process by Kiffin.

“I know there’s a lot of very, very raw, bitter feelings there at Ole Miss. There’s no universal truth here,” Pate said. “I don’t know what else you want me to tell you. Like everyone, when this has been going on? They’ve been wanting you to pick sides. The Ole Miss folks have wanted you to empathize with them, and the LSU folks have wanted you to say, ah man, we got to do whatever it takes to land our coach and he can act any way he wants to, that’s just part of the fun. It’s like, obviously, if the roles were reversed, everyone in Baton Rouge would be saying the things that people in Oxford are saying, and that doesn’t absolve you because everyone in Oxford would be saying what my friends down in Baton Rouge are saying right now. And, the innocent bystanders?

“You can just apply all of that to yourselves if you’re ever in the market for a coach, or if your coach ever leaves you. Because one of the most overused adages in sports is fan is short for fanatic. I don’t think I’ve ever said it on the show. It’s so old…However, it is true, so there’s a lot of fanaticism here. Any fanbase in any of these spots would’ve felt the same way.

“Everyone has their take on what really happened. I know that. I know everyone has an opinion. So, not only is it not enough to know the truth, and that is very, very soft and very, very much written in shades of grey depending on who you are here. But, everyone has their opinion on whether this was all orchestrated, when did he know he was going to go to LSU, did he just lead Ole Miss on this whole time, was he really conflicted, was he just lying to your face? You don’t know. You think you know. You don’t know…There were just a lot of different perspectives, okay.”

However, the only aspect of this that Pate personally disagreed with was the notion that Kiffin, who he admitted to actually arguing with about this, would be allowed to continue to coach Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff despite taking the job at LSU. He couldn’t believe that anyone, let alone the powers that be in their athletics department, would allow that to be the case during the Rebels’ upcoming appearance in the CFP. Still, that’s what he thinks these last few days of this process came down to for Kiffin.

“I think the fight the final few days was not so much am I leaving or not, and this is my personal perspective on this.” Pate continued. “The fight the final few days was am I going to be able to stick around here and coach? And, there were a lot of different takes on that too…I thought it was laughable. I’ve always thought the notion of him being able to stick around at Ole Miss, and coach as long as he wants to even though he’s taken a job with a rival, was laughable. I told him this. Had an argument about it, and our opinions just differ on that. But I looked at it from the vantage point of Keith Carter.

“You know, the one thing you can’t accuse Lane of being is really, really dishonest. I know that comes as a shock to a lot of people, but he was pretty forthright in what he had been doing the entire time, whether it be is family going and checking out property down in Gainesville or Baton Rouge the next day, and what he was considering and where his mind was. He was pretty communicative with the administration there as far as I know the entire time. I think he thought that built up a lot of goodwill, so that, when it came time for him to make a decision, if he hit the exit door, that goodwill and that equity could be cashed in in the form of I get to stick around and coach this team in the playoff, as long as our season goes. And I just never thought that was going to happen.

“So, it didn’t happen, and anyone who thought that was going to happen? I mean, really, genuinely, thought that was going to happen? I just ask – why? Why did you ever think that was going to happen? Put yourself not in the shoes of Lane Kiffin, or a fan. Put yourself in the shoes of Keith Carter, the athletic director there. Like, why?” Pate asked. “I could never come up with an answer. I could come up with a lot of answers as to why it wouldn’t happen, if I were him, or why I wouldn’t allow it to happen.”

There’s no doubt of the reaction, both in the conference and nationally, caused today by Kiffin. That’ll only continue into this next week, as his former team prepares for where they’ll be set in the playoff while he prepares for his new tenure at this next program.