Paul Finebaum on Lane Kiffin: 'At some point he's going to have to win that big game'

Lane Kiffin has taken Ole Miss from a 4-8 program the year before he arrived to one that won 11 games a season ago. The next step for the Rebels is to win an SEC Championship or at least reach the SEC title game.

Paul Finebaum was asked on GoJo and Golic recently if Ole Miss is ready to compete for a title. Finebaum is a believer in the talent that the Rebels have acquired, but he still has questions about Lane Kiffin as a coach.

“Well, the only question I have, not trying to start another food fight with Lane, is Lane Kiffin,” Finebaum said. “And at some point he’s going to have to win that big game.”

To Finebaum’s point, Lane Kiffin is 2-6 against top 10 teams during his time at Ole Miss, with wins coming against Kentucky in 2022 and Penn State in last year’s Peach Bowl.

Kiffin lost every matchup against former Alabama head coach Nick Saban, despite Finebaum believing that the Rebels had more talent a couple of times.

“He allowed Nick Saban to beat him a couple of times when he shouldn’t have. That’s probably the one I would point to the most,” Finebaum said. “He’s done everything else other than slay Saban.”

Perhaps this is the year Kiffin and Ole Miss finally get over the hump. Saban has now retired, and the Rebels bring back plenty of talent. They also added reinforcements from the transfer portal, including former Texas A&M star defensive lineman Walter Nolen.

“He’s got a really good quarterback. He’s got a couple of defensive players — one from Texas A&M that was literally all-world,” Finebaum said. “And I think that’s going to help him. His schedule is probably manageable where there are a couple of schools in the SEC that I mentioned that the schedules are going to eat them up.”

Ole Miss has a very easy out of conference slate that includes matchups against Furman, Middle Tennessee, Wake Forest and Georgia Southern.

As far as SEC teams, the Rebels face preseason No. 1 Georgia, but they avoid Texas, Alabama and Missouri, which are the next three highest-rated SEC teams in the Coaches Poll.

Perhaps this is the year Ole Miss finally gets over the hump and wins a championship or at least competes for one. But in order to do so, Kiffin and the Rebels are going to have to win some big games.

The regular season gets underway for Ole Miss on Aug. 31 against Furman, with the SEC opener scheduled for Sept. 28 against Kentucky.