Pete Golding speaks about importance of managing transfer portal class

The Ole Miss football team is coming off an 11-win campaign and certainly eyeing more for the 2024 season, using a similar blueprint as the one that put the Rebels into the Peach Bowl this winter. The transfer portal has been a big part of that.

Few teams had as much success as Ole Miss mining the portal for talent, and the Rebels are about to kick it up another few notches in 2024.

So what exactly has gone into that success? Ole Miss defensive coordinator Pete Golding noted it’s about knowing what you’re getting into that is one of the biggest keys.

“I think we’re in a unique time in college football, to be honest with you,” Golding said. “Developmental players that you used to take to be able to add bulk and size and strength, some of those guys depending upon their mental makeup you’re not going to have a chance to develop because they’re not going to come in and play as true freshmen. And depending upon who’s in their circle, December hits and the portal opens and they might seek other opportunities.

“You’ve invested six to 10 months depending on whether they were mid-semester or summer that you’re not going to get back, that they’re not going to get back.”

Figuring out how to minimize those occurrences with the transfer portal is going to be the real key for a lot of teams moving forward. Because there are few remedies for getting it wrong.

“So I think it’s recruiting the right type of kid, regardless whether it’s a transfer kid or a high school kid, that goes back to loving football,” Golding said. “I think there’s got to be a connect why they want to be at Ole Miss, why they want to play for coach (Lane) Kiffin, why they want to play in a scheme that’s been successful and being around coaches that have been around guys that produce guys that get to the next level.

“So I think it’s a combination of a lot of things, but I think whether you’re high school recruiting or portal recruiting, the No. 1 thing is is it a good fit? I think Ole Miss isn’t for everybody. And I think they come in and they see our guys; I think our current players do a really good job on official visits of being honest, telling them what it’s really like. I think there’s no smoke and mirrors to where, hey, you’re getting told one thing, when you get there it’s something different. I appreciate that much about coach Kiff. Very honest and up front, we’ve got a great group of guys, great character that are really good football players that I think a lot of people want to be a part of right now.”

All of that played into how Ole Miss meshed this past season. The transfer portal players were bought into doing what they needed to do to hit the field.

And when the snaps correspond to who’s working the hardest, it’s easy to get a whole team of players pushing in the same direction together.

“We’ve got a spot-the-ball mindset on defense,” Golding said. “We don’t care if it is practice, the playoffs or the playground, they spot the ball, we’re going to play. I think, when you have new guys and you’re coming into a new year, it’s about competing and about getting better every day.”

Golding said the goal when they went into offseason workouts before the 2023 season wasn’t to win 11 games. It wasn’t to reach the Peach Bowl.

Instead, it was to just take things one day at a time. Transfer portal players, recruits, returning players, it didn’t matter.

“We weren’t focused on the outcome,” Golding said. “It’s, hey, how can we take day by day to learn the system a little better, to learn each other better, to practice harder, to prepare harder on order to play better football.

“I think those start stacking and start adding up. You got guys practicing extremely hard, playing hard. We probably rotate 28 guys on any given game on defense, which shows the depth we have on that side of the football. It’s neat to see the buy-in. You want for other guys to play well, and they start pulling for them and coaching them in meetings and all those.”

Ole Miss will put its transfer portal strategy to the test in a big way in 2024. This year even more big names are coming in, which brings with it the chance for egos to get in the way.

But if Golding is right about being able to pick out the right guys in recruiting, it won’t be an issue. Time will tell.

Golding broke down what he’s looking for once again.

“To see the development of that piece that I think correlates to winning and losing instead of focusing on the outcome, focusing on working your butt off and doing little things right,” he said. “I think obviously towards the end of the year we played our best football because those things started to stack up.”