Notes: Kiffin not paying attention to 'rat poison' expectations
DALLAS — Lane Kiffin has had a preseason top-10 team before.
It was 2012 and his USC Trojans were preseason No. 1. They didn’t finish there.
Instead, USC finished 7-6, losing in the Sun Bowl to Georgia Tech.
Twelve years and several stops later, Kiffin’s Ole Miss team is likely a lock to open the season ranked in the Associated Press Top 10. Unlike that USC team, however, this Ole Miss squad just might be deserving of its ranking.
Nick Saban certainly thinks so. The legendary former Alabama coach, working now for ESPN, is in Dallas this week as a media member covering Southeastern Conference Football Media Days. Saban said Monday he expects Texas and Georgia to meet in Atlanta in December for the SEC Championship Game. However, he included Ole Miss in that conversation, specifically noting that this is the first year the Rebels can match up with Georgia up front.
"They can this year,” Saban told The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman. “They’re gonna look more like an SEC team.”
Kiffin said he believes the Rebels “have a really good collection of players who decided to return, including all three who are here today (Jaxson Dart, Tre Harris and Jared Ivey) who had a chance to go to the pros. And we were able to add some intriguing portal pieces to that. But there’s a lot of work to do.
“Those expectations out there, those can do nothing. As Coach Saban used to say, that’s just truly the rat poison, especially in the preseason. There’s been plenty of teams not ranked high that ended up high and plenty of high-ranked teams that end up low. That really has nothing to do with the outcome.”
Kiffin said, when asked what he learned from that USC team in 2012, he and his staff “probably leaned into that too much at the time,” adding that the Trojans had quarterback Matt Barkley coming back off a 2011 team that finished strong.
“It didn’t work,” Kiffin said. “We probably should’ve resisted that more.”
This Ole Miss team also finished last season strong, but the Rebels were humbled in November in a blowout loss at Georgia. That night in Athens led Kiffin and Co. to a determination to recruit more size and more length on both sides of the line of scrimmage.
“It has to come together and play really well, but obviously, if that position group is playing really well, it changes the whole game,” Kiffin said. “That would be really exciting for them to develop the way that we hope.”
Kiffin said during his years at Ole Miss, he’s noticed that the Rebels were almost always been “the smaller, shorter team” when they’ve played upper-echelon teams.
“We have a lot of work to do and have to play really well and all that stuff, but I guess we’ll look better coming off the bus now,” Kiffin said.
HONORING MONTE: Kiffin lost his father, legendary NFL assistant Monte Kiffin, on Thursday. Monte Kiffin was 84.
On Monday, the Ole Miss coach was trying not to talk too much about his father, who was a constant presence around FAU when Kiffin was coaching in Boca Raton and Ole Miss after he moved to Oxford in December 2019.
“He always said do your job and my job here today is to represent Ole Miss as its head coach,” Kiffin said.
Kiffin said it was unique to have so much time on the playing field and around his program with his dad.
“That’s something not too many sons would be able to have,” Kiffin said. “So that was really special.”
HIGH PRAISE FOR DART: Dart is entering his third year as Ole Miss’ starter after transferring from USC. Kiffin said Dart made huge strides late last season, taking care of the football and developing players around him.
Kiffin said Dart is “so well-grounded” that he doesn’t have to worry about ego or selfishness as he sometimes had had to with experienced quarterbacks.
“I’ve said it before but he’s a really unique leader,” Kiffin said. “I don’t know that he ever wants to coach someday but he’d be a phenomenal head coach by the way he just impacts people around him and the time he spends with them.”