NASHVILLE — You can’t say you haven’t been warned.

It’s coming. Hell, to some degree, it’s already started. But make no mistake whatsoever. It is coming.

It, in case you’re wondering, is speculation that Lane Kiffin will be Auburn’s primary target sometime late next month. No. 8 Ole Miss, which improved to 6-0 overall and 2-0 in the Southeastern Conference here Saturday with a 52-28 win over Vanderbilt here at FirstBank Stadium, begins the second half of the season next Saturday in Oxford against Auburn, which spent its Saturday afternoon in Athens getting walloped by No. 2 Georgia, 42-10.

Auburn coach Bryan Harsin is, from a coaching perspective, a dead man walking. No matter what you think of Harsin, he never had a chance on the Plains. The powerful boosters who run Auburn had endured all of Gus Malzahn that they could at the end of the 2020 season, so they conspired to get rid of him. The goal was to fire Malzahn, give him his double-digit millions in buyout money and replace him with defensive coordinator Kevin Steele.

The problem, of course, was the athletic director at the time, Allen Greene, wasn’t on board with the second half of the coup. So after Malzahn was let go and awarded his golden parachute, Greene pushed back on the “just hire Steele” portion of the plan. Greene conducted a coaching search, one that eventually ended with the hiring of Harsin, who was Boise State’s coach at the time.

I’ve never been to Boise — if you’re a McCready & Siskey, powered by Reign Total Body Fuel fan, insert joke here — but I’ve been to Auburn, and I suspect the two places couldn’t be more different. Auburn can be a phenomenal job. Gene Chizik, for God’s sake, won a national championship there. Malzahn played in the title game. Terry Bowden went undefeated at Auburn. So did Tommy Tuberville. However, Auburn can make “Days Of Our Lives” blush. The drama! The scandal! When the Tigers are pulling in one direction, they’re dangerous. But when they’re not, the implosion is spectacular.

So here we are. Ole Miss has now won 17 of its last 20 games under Kiffin, dating back to a Jan. 2, 2021, Outback Bowl win over Indiana. Auburn is 9-11 in its last 20 games. So, yeah, Kiffin’s name is going to come up a lot this week when conversations shift to what comes next on the Plains.

Kiffin won’t mind. He subscribes to the “all publicity is good publicity” theory, and it’s served him well over the years. He’s a click magnet as well. If you want your story to get attention and aggregation, put Kiffin’s name in the headline and run his photo with the story. Kiffin moves the needle.

So, is it real? There’s the rub. There’s probably a morsel of truth to the idea that Auburn will kick the proverbial tires on Kiffin to justify the speculation, at least to an extent. Kiffin would not be doing himself any negotiating favors if he just shot it all down, either. But is it real? I highly, highly doubt it. And there are a number of reasons for that skepticism.

First, if Auburn boosters want to regain control over the program — and they do — Kiffin is not a good fit. Greene is gone now and Auburn is searching for a new athletics director, preferably one, I assume, who will do what the boosters want him to do. That AD, one would assume, will also hire someone who will do things more the Auburn way than Harsin did. That’s not Kiffin.

Kiffin is one hell of a football coach. He’s a brilliant offensive mind. He’s innovative and resourceful, as evidenced by how he used the transfer portal to turn what should have been a rebuilding year into a fall where Ole Miss just might be in the College Football Playoff discussion early next month.

Kiffin is not, however, the hobnob-with-the-boosters kind of coach. He’s a bit aloof. He likes to get out of town and head closer to an ocean, whether it be to fish in Florida or see his family in California. I’ve never asked him this directly, but I’d bet a decent amount of money that he despises the glad-handing fan events with a blazing passion. Honestly, if Auburn is looking at Ole Miss coaches, they should head to Liberty. There’s a guy there who, assuming he can avoid the pitfalls of Twitter, makes a ton of sense.

Secondly, Kiffin is the brand at Ole Miss. Let me clarify that statement. Kiffin is THE brand at Ole Miss. He arrived in Oxford, changed the uniforms, shut out the good ole boys and just started winning his way. He’s adored in Oxford. His daughter, now a senior at Oxford High School, moved to Mississippi in the summer. She wanted a dog. Kiffin bought a yellow Labrador retriever. They named the dog Juice. With apologies to Jaxson Dart, Juice is now the second biggest celebrity in Oxford. He’s essentially Ole Miss’ new mascot. Just a week ago, he was hanging with Laura Rutledge and assaulting Tim Tebow’s microphone. Auburn isn’t the kind of place to make Kiffin the brand. Juice can displace Ole Miss’ ill-designed tin can of a mascot, Tony the Landshark, but he’s not going to push Aubie out of the way.

Finally, in the new era of college football, Ole Miss just might be a better job. Historically, there’s no question Auburn is head, shoulders, knees and toes a better job than Ole Miss. It’s not debatable. But today? I wonder.

Ole Miss is paying Kiffin $7.5 million a year and it will almost certainly pay him more — likely much more — in 2023. The school is refurbishing the Manning Center. It has relaunched The Grove Collective, the NIL effort necessary to remain competitive.

I have no doubt Kiffin is occasionally frustrated with some things at Ole Miss — the slowness with which things happen drives him crazy, I’m told — but I think he knows he has a good gig. Are there jobs he’d leave for? Sure. However, if you draw a Venn diagram of jobs that would pay Kiffin $9-plus million per year, make him the brand and have the resources to load up on five-star prospects and openings at those schools and it’s a really small overlap. Tiny.

If I were an Ole Miss fan, I’d be worried about the Cowboys, Panthers or Jets than I would Auburn, but that’s just me.

Regardless, it’s coming this week. If you choose to let it drive you crazy and ruin the build-up to another Saturday in The Grove, that, frankly, is on you. If you let it consume you, your stress is your fault.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is Tuberville redux. I just highly doubt it. It’s illogical and I strongly suspect Kiffin feels the same way.

Yes, he was interested in the job two years ago. Things have changed. In today’s college football, two years might as well be two centuries. Kiffin now has a great thing at Ole Miss. I suspect it’ll take more than Auburn to seduce him away from it.