They’re not exactly buddies, so maybe we should start there.
Pete Golding didn’t know Lane Kiffin before he left Nick Saban and Alabama and took the defensive coordinator job at Ole Miss. Kiffin needed a DC, and Golding loved everything about Ole Miss.
The town, the campus, the people, the vibe. All of it.
The job was secondary. Two kids under the age of 10, and seven family moves already under his jobs belt since 2006, and Ole Miss may just be the last damn stop.
“I came here for this place,” Golding said earlier this spring. “I absolutely believed this could be the last move.”
Unless they eventually run him out like every other school and every other coach.
Make no mistake, it’s a brutal business of winning and leverage, of moving up and cashing in, or falling down and cashing out. Of statement games and defining moments.
Of shining or wilting, and breaking out or breaking down. It takes tread off the coaching tires, and years off your body.
The LSU vs. Ole Miss bonanza Saturday night is but one of many big games.
“Look at me, I’ve got gray hair,” said Golding, who just turned 42 in February. “Had to get in shape, so I’ve lost some (weight), feeling better. Gotta be your absolute best in this job.”
Especially when it could be your last.
Wait, not like that. Not because Golding will fail and Ole Miss will fire him and the constantly whirring coaching carousel will add another lost soul. But because Ole Miss may have found the perfect fit.
The southerner, the everyman. Given nothing and earning everything. Grew up in Hammond, La., about four hours south of Oxford and a near direct shot on I-55.
Dad was a football coach, Mom was a scholar and administrator at Southeastern Louisiana for four decades. While the great Monte Kiffin helped grease the tracks for his son’s early coaching career, Golding was grinding through jobs at Delta State, Tusculum, Southeastern Louisiana and Southern Miss until Saban shocked everyone by hiring an unknown UTSA assistant as his new defensive coordinator.
Golding arrived in Tuscaloosa a year after Saban fired Kiffin for focusing more on his new job at FAU, and not enough on Alabama playing for the national title. Golding and Kiffin’s paths never crossed until Kiffin needed a defensive coordinator, and who better than the guy who had been part of a national championship team at Alabama in 2020 — and a move that would weaken the Tide in the process.
It should come as no surprise that Ole Miss got better as a program when Golding arrived in 2023. The defense got stouter and saltier, the team got tougher.
From eight-win underachievers in 2022 and the program at a crossroads under Kiffin, to three straight seasons of double-digit wins. You better believe Golding played a role in those 34 wins — which is why Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter skipped interim and went straight to permanent head coach at the end of last season when Kiffin left for LSU.
A move Golding tried to convince Kiffin wasn’t exactly the prudent decision.
“Told him we had it rolling here,” Golding said. “Why walk away from that?”
So now the program that did whatever Kiffin wanted for the previous six seasons, giving him every financial advantage he could ask for to build and develop a program, has turned to their everyman, Golding.
He pushes the envelop and spirit of the rules, and he can recruit the transfer portal, too. Players love him, and the administration and fanbase defends him to the edge of the cliff and back.
“We all knew Lane was a pain in the ass,” said Walker Jones, a former star Ole Miss linebacker in the 1990s and president of The Grove NIL collective. “But he was our pain the ass. Pete’s our guy.”
So yeah, Ole Miss wants to beat LSU Saturday, wants to serve Kiffin his comeuppance for the world to see. Wants the win and the attention, wants to bathe in the sheer enormity of the moment.
It also wants Golding > Kiffin.
Want to put an exclamation point on Ole Miss life without Kiffin? If last year’s CFP run was magical, beating LSU Saturday would be monumental.
For the everyman, earning everything.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pete Golding is an Ole Miss fit, something Lane Kiffin could never pull off | Opinion