When last they gathered to evaluate the candidates for the championship tournament that will close the 2025 season, the members of the College Football Playoff committee looked at what had transpired through 13 weeks and judged the Ole Miss Rebels to have delivered the seventh-best performance of any Division I team.
What has happened to Ole Miss since? Well, a lot. The team traveled a few hours to Mississippi State and shredded the rival Bulldogs by nearly three touchdowns. Quarterback Trinidad Chambliss passed for 359 yards and four TDs. Kewan Lacy rushed for 143 yards and a score. The defense turned over the Bulldogs twice.
And …
And nothing.
For the purposes of CFP committee deliberations, this is all that should matter regarding Ole Miss. That their coach chose to bail on the process of pursuing a national championship and left for a different job should not even come up as a subject in the meeting room, unless it’s merely to discuss the absurdity of a coaching quitting on a title contender.
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There had been plenty of discussion in advance of Lane Kiffin’s official move to LSU about the committee’s capacity to “punish” Ole Miss for the change in its circumstance -- either by dropping the team's seeding or possibly excluding the Rebels altogether. As Kiffin has shown so obviously, however, what one can do is not always the same as what one should do.
Of the teams the committee ranked ahead of No. 7 Ole Miss last Tuesday, only No. 3 Texas A&M failed to win its scheduled game. They both now own equivalent records (11-1, 7-1) as members of the SEC, and both will watch No. 4 Georgia and No. 10 Alabama compete for their conference championship Saturday.
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As the committee decides where to rank A&M in the aftermath of its loss to Texas, all that should be considered is its accomplishment in terms of quality victories and the nature of its lone defeat. Oregon and Texas Tech join Ole Miss as one-loss top-10 teams, but it might be most instructive to compare the Aggies to the Rebels because of their shared league affiliation.
Texas A&M defeated No. 9 Notre Dame out of conference, but its only victory against an SEC team that finished at least.500 was against Missouri (8-4, 4-4). The composite league record of A&M’s SEC victims was 12-44.
Ole Miss’ most significant non-league win was against No. 24 Tulane -- which may reach the playoff as champion of the American Conference – but there was a league win over No. 8 Oklahoma. The composite league record of Ole Miss’ SEC victims was 15-41.
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So it’s debatable where A&M should land.
It’s not debatable that football accomplishments should be the only consideration.
We’ve seen committees encounter these situations before, and we can hope they learned from their egregious mistakes.
It happened two years ago with this same body – albeit populated by some different figures – when they excluded an undefeated Florida State from what was then a four-team, invite-only playoff. That team would make it now, because even after quarterback Jordan Travis was injured, the Seminoles defeated Louisville for the ACC Championship. But the committee then looked at their games at Florida and in the ACC final and decided to be unimpressed. That episode ranked with the biggest disgraces in college football history.
What occurred in 2000 with the Cincinnati basketball program was not as egregious, but ask Bearcats fans even a quarter-century later how they feel about that year’s March Madness bracket. That year’s NCAA Tournament selection committee had to evaluate a Cincinnati team that lost superstar Kenyon Martin with a broken leg in the first game of its conference tournament.
The Bearcats were 28-3 when that game finished, 10-1 on the road, 16-0 in Conference USA. They ranked first in the metric of the time, the Ratings Percentage Index, and had wins over No. 3 Iowa State, No. 17 Oklahoma, No. 24 North Carolina and No. 32 Gonzaga, none of those at home. It was indisputably a No. 1 seed resume.
There was no way to know exactly what they’d be without a player as influential as Martin, who was unanimous national Player of the Year. So the committee guessed, and made Cincinnati a No. 2 seed. Those administrators owed the Bearcats what they’d earned, but they took it away because they could.
In the years since, several teams deliberately disguised what became season-ending injuries because it was the only way to avoid getting the Cincinnati treatment.
Ole Miss did not have that option with Kiffin. He made a very public spectacle out of his consideration of whether to depart for LSU, and of his ultimate decision to take the job, and of his desperate effort to vilify the Ole Miss administration for not allowing him to coach the Rebels in the postseason after he’d already chosen to leave.
It shouldn’t matter. We know Kiffin’s gone. We know he was a highly effective playcaller whose imagination will be missed on the sideline, just as the Bearcats were sure to be less fearsome in the lane without Martin to swat down opposing layups.
We can’t know, however, whether the Ole Miss players will be inspired or dispirited by Kiffin’s departure. We can’t know if whomever else is handed the visor and the playcard will find the weaknesses in each opponent’s defensive scheme.
We only know what Ole Miss has been: According to the CFP committee, the sixth or seventh most qualified team to compete for the championship. And that’s what they should remain, no matter who left the building.