Jeff Lebby looks ahead to future rivalry with Lane Kiffin

There have been plenty of college football coaching changes this offseason and one that snuck under the radar was Mississippi State‘s hire of former Oklahoma assistant coach Jeff Lebby.

Lebby will be tasked with getting the Bulldogs back on track and competitive with surging rival Ole Miss. He’s quite familiar with the Rebels.

The new Mississippi State head man worked on the other side of the rivalry for two years, under current Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, from 2020-21. He had a front row seat for the show that always, always accompanies Kiffin.

“I think that there’s plenty to be said about it that I probably won’t say much, but no, I don’t think it’ll stop,” Jeff Lebby said on the Andy Staples On3 show, referring to Kiffin’s frequent social media trolling. “We’ll probably look up and there will be something else out there at some point in time.”

Trolling or not, Ole Miss has won three of the last four meetings, including both the contests when Lebby was coaching up the Rebels. So Mississippi State will have its work cut out for it turning things around in the rivalry series.

And Lebby watched his top quarterback walk out the door when veteran Will Rogers transferred to Washington.

While it’s not the first coach-mentor battle in the Southeastern Conference — there were a handful over the last decade thanks to one Nick Saban — it’ll certainly be an intriguing one. Both Lebby and Kiffin have offensive backgrounds.

And with Kiffin’s tendency to troll, the stakes get raised a little higher even.

So while Jeff Lebby artfully ducked any questions about Kiffin’s trolling on the Andy Staples On3 show, there will be plenty of time for fireworks in the future.

“Incredibly appreciative of my time there working for Lane and doing the things we were able to do there,” Jeff Lebby said. “But man, could not be more excited about where this thing’s going, and obviously that’s going to be a fun one Thanksgiving weekend.”

Mississippi State and Ole Miss are scheduled to meet on Nov. 30 in Oxford, Miss.