The boos will come Saturday night. So will the resentment.
When Lane Kiffin jogs into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium for the first time as LSU's coach, he won't be returning as a beloved former coach getting a standing ovation. He'll be returning as the man Ole Miss fans believe left them at the altar.
Kiffin walked away with Ole Miss preparing for the first College Football Playoff run in school history.
The departure left behind hard feelings that remain very much alive in Oxford. It wasn't just that Kiffin left. It was what happened next.
As detailed in John Talty's forthcoming biography, Lane Being Lane: The Story of Lane Kiffin, College Football's Agent of Chaos, Kiffin wasn't merely moving on to LSU. He was actively attempting to bring key Ole Miss
players with him, including quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, whose unexpected rise helped fuel the Rebels' playoff run.
According to attorney Tom Mars, Kiffin became intensely invested in Chambliss' eligibility appeal, frequently checking for updates and making little effort to disguise why.
Ultimately, Ole Miss fought off LSU's pursuit. The Rebels convinced Chambliss to stay, retained star running back Kewan Lacy and advanced into the playoff under new coach Pete Golding. But the episode only deepened the divide between Kiffin and the program he left behind.
Now the architect of that chaos returns to Oxford with a top-10 LSU team, national championship aspirations and a spotlight he has never exactly tried to avoid.
The college football world already would've been watching. Talty's reporting adds another layer to a game that was personal long before kickoff.
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Three days before Ole Miss’s home playoff game against Tulane, Tom Mars got a curious voicemail.
“Tom, this is Lane. Please call me.”
Mars, a former general counsel for Walmart, had never talked to Lane Kiffin before in his life. He was aware of him, obviously, but wasn’t sure the message was even authentic. When he checked with a friend that the phone number was really Kiffin’s, he became intrigued about what the new LSU head coach wanted.
Over the phone, Kiffin explained to him the Trinidad Chambliss situation. Chambliss became a national revelation in his lone season at Ole Miss after he replaced an injured Austin Simmons and never let go of the starting job. There was something special about Chambliss that seemed to make everyone around him better. Despite not starting the first two games, he finished the season with 3,937 passing yards and 22 touchdowns.
Chambliss was trying for another year of eligibility but was facing an NCAA hurdle. Mars had developed a reputation as a bulldog attorney who wasn’t afraid to grapple with the NCAA, privately or publicly. Interestingly, he had previously represented former Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt and played a role in the Hugh Freeze escort scandal when his diligent review of Freeze’s phone records turned up inappropriate calls. Had that never happened, who knows if Kiffin ever would have ended up at Ole Miss in the first place.
Kiffin said Chambliss was a great kid who could really use outside help to put pressure on the NCAA to do the right thing. After reviewing the case and talking with Ole Miss compliance director Taylor Hall, Mars agreed to take on Chambliss’s cause. At the time, Ole Miss had already appealed the NCAA’s initial denial of the school’s waiver request which hinged on Chambliss missing the 2022 season at Division-II Ferris State due to complications around tonsillitis.
As Mars put together his strategy, Kiffin wanted near constant updates on where things stood. He’d text or call Mars several times a day. It was beyond unique for a rival head coach to be that invested in trying to get a player an extra year of eligibility, even if it was a former player. But Lane didn’t even try to hide his true intentions.
“It was clear to me — it’d be clear to anyone except the village idiot — that he was hoping the appeal would be granted so he could bring Trinidad to LSU,” says Mars.
Mars enjoyed his conversations with the LSU head coach. The more they talked, the more open Kiffin became with him about what he was trying to do. With the transfer portal soon to open, time was of the essence for him. Kiffin knew he needed a transfer portal quarterback and Chambliss was his preferred pick, but he couldn’t afford to wait long on him. If Chambliss couldn’t get his appeal approved in time, he’d have to move on to his other top targets because of how fast the transfer portal quarterback market would move. He repeatedly asked the lawyer for his educated opinion on the likelihood that the NCAA would grant Chambliss’ appeal. Eventually, Kiffin told Mars if the NCAA didn’t “declare him eligible by that weekend, then I’ve got to go get somebody else.”
***
Ole Miss knew what Kiffin was up to. It knew that he badly wanted to steal Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy. And it knew he was using running backs coach Kevin Smith as his proxy to stay in Lacy’s ear, especially about leaving for LSU.
Pete Golding, Keith Carter and Grove Collective executive director Walker Jones acted decisively to prevent that from happening. First, it convinced Chambliss to stay. It would be pending a successful NCAA appeal, but Ole Miss could afford to wait out that process in a way that Kiffin couldn’t. Ole Miss finalized a late-night deal with Chambliss — “It was an all-night process. It’s crazy what happens after midnight,” says Walker Jones. LSU pivoted to Arizona State transfer Sam Leavitt. Having Chambliss on board was key, but so was the comfort Lacy felt in Oxford. He trusted Golding and others to deliver on their promises.
“The biggest thing is we didn’t panic, we didn’t get desperate,” Jones says. “We trusted what those guys were telling us. We also trusted that we had done right by those guys. We had done right by Trinidad, we had done right by Kewan… and we treated them with respect and we listened to them.”
Lane was the one who roped Tom Mars into Chambliss’s NCAA appeal, but once he knew that the quarterback was staying in Oxford, his tone changed. After initially selling Mars on what a great kid Chambliss was and why he deserved another season, Lane now scoffed that the quarterback only had a sore throat. Lane even called Mars one day and claimed that he and Chambliss would lose their Mississippi court case.
“After the portal, the switch flipped,” says Mars. “There weren’t any encouraging messages. Mostly sarcastic. I thought it was kind of fun.”
Excerpted from the book “Lane Being Lane: The Story of Lane Kiffin, College Football’s Agent of Chaos.” From Harper Books. Reprinted with permission.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lane Kiffin backed Trinidad Chambliss' extra year — until the QB stayed at Ole Miss
