Lane Kiffin faces plenty of his former coworkers when he and LSU football travel to Ole Miss for a top-10 matchup. One of those former coworkers is head coach Pete Golding, who was promoted to head coach after Kiffin left before the College Football Playoff in 2025.
"He coaches players really, really hard on the field, but then loves them up, too, so they know that he really cares about them and he does a really good job schematically giving people problems over time," Kiffin said.
Kiffin and Golding both worked under Nick Saban at Alabama. Kiffin held the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach role from 2014-16 while Golding was the defensive coordinator from 2018-22. Ahead of Saturday's reunion, Kiffin recalled how Golding came to Oxford.
"I was researching him because I actually didn't know Pete," Kiffin said. "I just knew how well he had done, you know? And then we were talking about hiring him away from Alabama, and someone in common that we know said to me, you know, when Nick Saban interviewed Pete, he's interviewed a lot of people. I mean, he was interviewing for a position job at the time and then moved [Pete] up to coordinator, I think, after, like, one game or something. He said it was the most impressive interview that [Nick Saban] had ever seen. That's a lot of coaches that coach interviewed on defense to say that about."
The Rebels under Golding already have a ranked win in 2026 thanks to a 41-38 victory over No. 24 Louisville. They followed it up with a 41-9 thrashing of Charlotte. Kiffin spoke plenty about how LSU is preparing to take on Ole Miss but reserved space to give Golding his respect.
"The game's really slow for him," Kiffin said. "He sees it really slow when everybody else is going really fast and does a great job communicating with the guys during it. You know, we put him upstairs so that he could really maximize that from upstairs and he's done a great job."
This article originally appeared on LSU Wire: Lane Kiffin reveals thoughts on Pete Golding ahead of LSU vs Ole Miss