As Lane Kiffin mulls his next move, the Ole Miss football team continues to be in the driver’s seat for its first-ever College Football Playoff appearance. The Rebels moved up one spot to No. 6 in the latest rankings, with Saturday’s 34-24 win over Florida and an Alabama loss to Oklahoma catalyzing the bump.
If the playoff were to begin today, Ole Miss would play Miami in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Action for the 12-team field is scheduled to kick off with one game on Friday, Dec. 19, and three other contests occur the next day. The top four teams will earn a first-round bye.
Rebel running back Kewan Lacy, the SEC’s co-offensive player of the week, had a career-high 224 yards and three touchdowns in the win over Florida. Lacy also became the red and blue’s single-season rushing and all-purpose touchdown leader in the process. The win occurred in front of a record crowd and over a Gator program looking to poach Kiffin from Oxford. LSU, another team Ole Miss beat this year, is also in the hunt for the offensive mastermind to be its next football frontman.
Ole Miss remains in a peculiar situation with the prospects of Kiffin being the Rebels’ head coach hanging in the balance. While sources close to the scene told SuperTalk Mississippi News that leadership in the Ole Miss athletics department has given Kiffin a deadline to decide his next step, the head coach denied any reports of an ultimatum.
“That’s absolutely not true. There’s been no [ultimatum] or anything like that at all. I don’t know where that came from, like a lot of stuff that comes out,” Kiffin told ESPN’s Pat McAfee on Tuesday. “We’re having a blast. I love it here … It just couldn’t be better. You prayed for things. Our fans prayed for this type of thing, and now we’re in the middle of it, so enjoy it.”
Kiffin’s inevitable decision aside, Ole Miss is squarely in the playoff, barring a late-season collapse. A win in Black Friday’s Egg Bowl against a Mississippi State team displaying a grave difficulty in stopping the run would cement an opportunity for the Rebels to compete for a national title.
The full College Football Playoff rankings can be found below:
- Ohio State
- Indiana
- Texas A&M
- Georgia
- Texas Tech
- Ole Miss
- Oregon
- Oklahoma
- Notre Dame
- Alabama
- BYU
- Utah
- Miami
- Vanderbilt
- USC
- Georgia Tech
- Texas
- Michigan
- Virginia
- Tennessee
- Illinois
- Missouri
- Houston
- Tulane
- Arizona State
The rankings will be updated again next Tuesday.